by James Kahn
The others smiled comfortably and followed. They all felt in good company.
On the far side of the bamboo wood the terrain became hilly, covered with scrub. The aging sun cast long shadows. It was turning into a long day. Josh felt tired.
It was a world of struggle through which the companions made their way. The signs of this were bright at every turn: in broken, half-buried skeletons; in suspicious, hidden eyes that stared at the passing party from bushes and caves; in the totems that stood cockeyed at random intervals, staking territory, warding evil; in empty shelters, crumbled with age. Struggle and change. At the edge of a slow rise with an eastern face, in a shallow stone gully, they found the crippled cart. Footprints were everywhere. The smells of fur and dander settled over the grass like a film of new snow. Josh kneeled, picking up a long strand of Human hair from a low branch. Hard sign.
“It can’t be long now,” said Josh, his eyes focused in the direction the mass of footprints headed.
Isis, sniffing the ground, suddenly hissed. Beauty ran over, knelt, rubbed the caky dirt between his fingers. “Blood,” he said. He smelled it himself. “Human.” He paused. “Dicey’s, I think.”
The hairs on Joshua’s neck stood upright in ancient response. He began trotting south, close on the wake of the disaster.
Nightfall. The four stalkers perched on a cliff ledge. Below them, in the distance, spread along the furrows of a dying creek, lay the Accident camp. Perhaps fifty Vampires and other creatures mingled with their shadows among the fires and tents of the bivouac, while clumps of Humans could be seen tied together in the outlying darkness. It was far enough away that faces could not be seen.
“Too many to storm,” whispered Josh. “We need a plan.”
“I say we wait here until they move out,” proposed Jasmine. “We can strike them easier on the trail.”
“No,” answered Beauty, “we may lose them. We have them now.”
“We have nothing,” Jasmine shook her head. “We have dust in our mouths.”
Beauty scowled. Josh waved them both quiet. “We need a plan. I’ll slip down there and check it out. Maybe I can even cut them loose, we can just all sneak away.” He generally tried not to exhibit such bravado; but the twisting pain in his lower back was growing almost too loud to ignore, and made Josh bold with fear, reckless with urgency.
Beauty shook his head. “It is too dangerous. You would get caught. Besides. I want that Vampire’s neck in my hands.”
“Not until Dicey is safe,” cautioned Joshua.
Isis, whose head had been turning from one to the other as each spoke, walked up to Josh. “We’re your girl,” she said. Her eyes penetrated his.
He knitted his brow at first, then realized what the little Cat was saying. “No,” he said, scratching her between the ears, “it’s too dangerous, Fur-face.”
Jasmine’s expression illuminated. “No, she’s right, she’s the one to slip down into the camp. She’ll be able to sneak in easier than any of us. She can tell the others we’re here, without being seen. She may even be able to bite their bonds loose. If not, she can scout the area, come back here, and tell us the lay. I say she goes.”
Beauty had to agree. “I think the Neuroman may be right this time, Joshua. I think …”
Josh was shaking his head saying, “She can’t go, and that’s all there is to it, and she can’t go because …” But as he looked around to where Isis had been sitting, he saw he’d been talking to the wind. Isis was gone.
She crouched under a thicket, her ears forward, her nostrils flared, her pupils dilated by darkness and excitement. In the near distance, three Accidents sat around a dwindling campfire, playing some kind of game with carved bones. Isis suppressed an impulse to mark this perimeter with a few drops of her urine and leave the creatures to their own bad company.
Two Vampires walked over, stood very near her hiding spot as they spoke to each other of easy conquests over powerful foes. She could see their feet from her bush, smell their smell. She remained crouching, motionless as earth, breathless as stone. The Vampires moved on. Isis respired.
She skittered silently through some high grass to the back of a tent at the edge of the firelight. Inside the tent, voices mixed.
“—a company of Jarl’s Guard in the forest … tortured two of the Accident—”
“—damn their eyes, what do they want with our lot? Double the sentries, then—”
“—or if we stay here any longer—” “—must cross the Big Stick by the end of—” “—only the Queen—”
Isis couldn’t make out much of the conversation, but the smells were strictly Vampire, strong and pungent. She tiptoed around the side of the tent, waited in the dancing shadow. A breeze came up from the direction of the creek bed, then died; but now there was a new smell. A Human smell. The bloody-dirt smell she’d found earlier in the day by the broken-down cart.
She sidled along a fallen tree crawling with termites; padded up the creek’s ravine; stopped short as a rat ran across her path, bold as brass; walked more slowly, approaching camp noises: clattering pans, laughter, growls. She could see now that the tents formed a large loose circle, with bonfires scattered about. Empty carts were parked at the mouth of what seemed to be a canyon of sorts. Groups of ten or twelve Humans were tied at the ankles to each other, in the areas outlying the heat from the fires. An Accident guarded each group, but most of the guards were drinking, talking with friends, dozing: it was a fearful collection of animals, and none of them much thought anybody would be foolish enough to attack them here. Isis followed the blood-smell she remembered from the afternoon. It led her up the gully to a cluster of prisoners, most of whom were asleep.. The Accident who guarded them was nodding off against a rock. All the myriad frightening odors vibrated in the cool night air.
Isis gingerly approached the young sleeping girl with the strong blood-smell. This was the one. She had bruises and punctures all over her neck and wrist. Isis put out her paw, touched the girl’s arm. No response. She put out her claws and pressed them firmly against the girl’s pale skin. The girl moaned and turned, arousing the older female Human who slept beside her. The older one opened her eyes, looked straight at Isis, made to speak. Isis raised her paw to her mouth and said: “Shhh.”
The older girl sat up, startled. Isis whispered, “We’re here.” The older Human began to speak again, obviously confused, but Isis raised her paw, walked three steps to Rose’s ankle, and began to gnaw at her ropes.
Josh kept his gaze fixed on the Vampire encampment, but could see no unusual movement. He couldn’t decide whether this was good or bad. Beauty stood near a young birch, cutting arrows. Jasmine sat, eyes closed, in full lotus position, apparently asleep. Joshua was uncomfortable. Not just from the emotional tension—the infinitely distant nearness of Dicey and Rose; but physically discomfited as well. He turned. He sat. He couldn’t find a good position. He took out quill and paper and tried to set the record, but couldn’t find the words. His back, heavy with the ugly mark left by the Accident, was steadily throbbing. He stood up, felt his forehead break into a sweat. He walked several steps back from the cliff face, opened his pants to pass water against a tree. It wasn’t water he passed. It was blood. Then the cold sweat broke over him again, like a thick winter wave. Then he passed out.
When he awoke he was lying on his back on good old ground, Jasmine’s face hovering above him to the right, Beauty’s to the left. “What happened?” he said.
“You’re losing blood,” warned Jasmine. “Lie still.”
“But what—”
“Your kidney was damaged—torn, probably—during the fight today,” Jasmine spoke very slowly. “It may heal, if you can lie very still. For two or three days.”
“Three days!” Josh rasped. Beauty remained silent, stern. “Ridiculous,” Josh began to laugh, but the pain in his back stabbed him with brutal disregard.
“I was once a doctor,” Jasmine continued. “Listen to me.” She brought her face cl
ose, forcing Josh to look at it. “It’s not a bad laceration, or you’d have bled to death by now. Still, if it doesn’t heal, you’ll continue to lose blood, and you will die. It’s that simple.” Josh looked to Beauty for support, but Beauty was clearly worried. Josh looked back to Jasmine. “But the Vampires …” he said. He couldn’t help flinching from the flank pain the force of his words provoked.
Beauty nodded slowly, as if to himself. “Perhaps it would be best to wait until they break camp,” he spoke the words deliberately, each a dart pinning Josh to the ground. “We can choose our terrain, to our advantage. Perhaps the Neuroman was … right.” He had difficulty with the last word, but his conviction over Joshua’s safety was strong. Josh, pressed low under the heart and weight of-it, could not move.
They carried him delicately down to a large cavern Jasmine had discovered in the cliff wall, approachable only by a steep narrow path, protected from view by a gorsey overhang. In addition to the natural camouflage, they covered the entrance over with palm branches and fern, so when they finally gathered together inside, no one could glimpse them from any angle; nor could they see out.
Jasmine regaled them with stories of past adventures, partly to take the edge off Beauty’s obvious impatience at the delay, partly to ease Josh to sleep, take his mind off his injury.
“We used to hunt Dragon all the time,” she began. “Big old fart-bags. Used to be a price on their skins, for you know, fashion clothes. But it was a sport, too. We’d .see how close we could get; it was the greatest feat if we could touch them before we killed them. There was a time when there were arenas for Dragon-fights—like bullfights, just you and the Dragon, and sometimes your picadors. Oh, it was grand theater, I can tell you. The matador, in a little asbestos suit, and then the Dragon, overfed to give him gas, and then starved to make him mean. Wasn’t much of a fight, of course, even so—they were never the brightest animals. Oh, the dance the matador would do around the beast, though—so much ritual and romance. Pretty much wiped out the Dragon population, I’m afraid—that’s why you hardly see them anymore. Not much loss, though, far as I’m concerned—they were always creatures who were much more wonderful in myth than in reality. Some things are just like that, I guess—brilliant fantasies but they just don’t translate well into the real world. Wouldn’t surprise me if most fantasies ended up that way, in fact.” She stopped talking to look over at Joshua: his eyes were closed. Jasmine smiled and returned to the perch on the cliff ledge above them, to take the first watch. Beauty and Josh, in the cave below, settled into a deep brooding silence, until at last Joshua fell completely into a deep, brooding sleep.
Isis was almost through Rose’s ropes, when the Accident sneezed and woke up. Isis froze. The Accident’s waking yellow eyes fell directly on the small, still Cat. “Glombo tog,” spat the Accident. Cat-meat was a rare delicacy.
Isis didn’t wait for further conversation; she scatted through the underbrush into the night.
“Tog lumpu! Oglondo tog!” bellowed the Accident, loping groggily after Isis.
Bal emerged from his tent. “What’s the beast babbling?” he muttered with annoyance.
Uli, by his side, said, “Something about a Cat, Bal-Sire. Too much pepper-wine, the lout.”
Isis tore back up the creek bed, scattering last year’s leaves behind her. The Accident lumbered along in her trail, then stopped when she was obviously out of reach. “Tog debluk,” he stormed. Angrily, he turned, to see who among his prisoners was responsible for this unsatisfactory interlude.
Isis dashed over the ridge, into a dispersion of ferns. She crouched, waiting. Ears up, tail puffed. No one came. Slowly, her fur came down, her claws retracted. Through the fronds that hid her, she could see, a hundred yards down, the campfires jump higher—stirred up and refueled by the bristling, aroused guards, the nervous lieutenants. Shadows jumped frightfully. Isis smiled, licked her paw, drew it over her ear, down her head. It was difficult being such a clever Cat in a world of such dull wit. Tedious is what it was, tedious beyond understanding. She felt thoroughly unappreciated—by the Accident, who didn’t know how fast she could really run; by the Vampires, who didn’t even know she existed; by the prisoners, who hadn’t known what she was doing; by the crowd at the brothel, who couldn’t comprehend her art; by Beauty, who didn’t ken her cleverness; by everyone and everything who didn’t bother to notice exactly how terrific she was—unappreciated by the world. Except for Josh. He understood her. He loved her. For him, she would do all.
There was a scream, up the creek bed. Human, female. Shadows converged on the place where Isis had left the prisoners. At the sound, at the movement, her fur stood erect over her entire body. Her nostrils widened, her ears twitched. She took three quick steps out of the fern cover; stopped, sniffed; and darted silently back toward the enemy camp.
Josh was awakened by the sound of Jasmine sliding furtively into the cave. She replaced the propped branch she’d dislodged, to leave no trace of her entrance.
“What are—” began Beauty.
Jasmine brought her finger to her lips. “Shh,” she said. “Jarl’s Elite Guard, again.” She pointed to the ceiling of the cave. “Above us now.”
The three were totally silent for five full minutes. Finally Beauty said, “I hear nothing.”
Jasmine breathed easier. “Neither do I. That means they can’t hear us, either.”
“What happened?” Josh whispered.
“I was watching over the cliff at the Vampire camp. Nothing much doing. So I walked back about fifty yards to get some water at the spring we passed, when who do I see but that same damned bunch of JEGS that was sniffing up our trail back at Lon’s. Fewer of them now, and scragglier. Meaner, too.”
“Coming this way?”
“Coming, hell. I ran back to the little half-path we found trailing down into this hole. Rigged up a loose pile of rocks and gravel all along the area, so if anyone should start to wander down in this direction it would kick off a slide and dump the stuff all over our doorstep. Give us about a minute’s notice. Anyway, just as I finished, I peeked back over the cliff edge one more time, and there was the whole bunch, marching right up to our lookout perch. That’s where they are now, thirty feet straight above us, just drooling over the perfect view they’ve got of the Vampires and Accidents.”
“Maybe it will take their minds off us, for a change,” suggested Beauty.
“I wish I could hear them,” mumbled Josh.
“Thirty feet of rock is pretty good muffler,” Jasmine said. “And all that foliage, and the overhang. Soundproof, at least.” She let her eyes drift upward, then around to the three walls of the cave. “I just wish this place had a back door.”
CHAPTER 7: On The Origin Of Species
BEAUTY laid arrow on string as he sat down facing the cave entrance. Josh dipped his quill pen in a puddle of bloody muddy urine, extracted some paper from the Scribe-tube still strapped to his leg, and began to write.
Jasmine laughed, not unkindly. “Lord, what fools these mortals be,” she said.
Beauty looked annoyed. Joshua put down his pen. “Meaning what?” he replied.
She shrugged. “Meaning you’re suddenly so somber. The Centaur there looks like he’s ready to make his last stand, you’re writing your final fare-thee-wells. Suddenly everyone’s getting so meaningful.” She looked exasperated.
“What would you have us do?” demanded the Horse-man defensively.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing. Nothing to do. We’re here, they’re there, we’ve just got to sit tight. No use getting morbid about it. If they start to come our way, we’ll hear them. Then we can get significant. Until then, I’d just as soon tell stories to pass the time.”
“Stories?”
“Yeah, know any good ones?” she smiled. “Stories about mortality are my favorite. They’re entertaining and instructive. Anybody know the story of the appointment in Samara?”
“It seems to me,” Beauty spoke slowly, “that stories abo
ut death can hold little entertainment value for those as close to its gates as we.”
“On the contrary, Brother Beauty,” Jasmine twinkled. “Distance breeds disinterest, and humor is the mother of truth. If you can joke or spin a tale about the jaws of your darkest fear, you might just end up learning something about teeth.”
“Easy words for an immortal,” said the Centaur. It was not simply his own circling death on his mind; it was Rose’s as well, and Joshua’s.
“Is that what you believe?” Jasmine’s eyebrows went up.
“Some say so.”
“If words were only as powerful as the Scribes would like to think …” she began. Josh tensed. Jasmine stopped, then went on. “No, I can die—you saved my life, truly, yesterday. Though if I wait for natural causes, whatever they are, it’ll be a thousand years, most likely …”
“With so many years ahead of you,” intruded Beauty, “why are you not more worried about being killed early by the JEGS? You should be more concerned than we—you have more to lose.”
Jasmine sat against the cool stone wall. “I find proximity to my fears instructive. Besides, I’m not so sure long life is as valuable as I once thought.”
“How is it that Neuromans live so long?” posed Joshua. He lifted to his mouth the water-skin Jasmine had brought back from the spring.
“How is it,” mused Jasmine. “How, indeed. Well. A story not so entertaining as the Fast Thermonuclear War Story, nor so instructive; but a story to pass the time, nonetheless.” She scooted along the floor until she sat between the others, at the end of the cavern farthest from the covered doorway.
“Neuromans were once Human,” she began. “No, it’s true, you needn’t look so alarmed. When I was young, the world was a different place. It was ruled by Humans, for one thing, there were billions of them. They raised children, and armies, and buildings that scraped the sky, and general hell, and drove gas-burning wagons on huge rock-hard roads that ran thousands of miles, through mountains and under rivers. Lived in giant cities, millions of people crammed in together. Horrible places, but exciting. People were suffocating in the stench of their own machines. People were killing each other because they couldn’t think of anything better to do. Some people hated the some hated certain body parts, and some hated thoughts, and others didn’t think at all. Lots of talk about God, and sex was on everyone’s mind, one way or other. Nearly everybody could read and write. There were so many lights burning at night, the Milky Way could never be seen. Some people flew all the way up to the moon, just to sit on it. Doctors were pulling the hearts out of some Humans, and putting them into others. Scientists were photographing atoms, bottling electromagnetism, sculpting genetic material, squinting at the edge of the universe. Hypnotism, Scientology, guru gearloose transcendental biofeedback. Civilization was going mad.” She sat back, closed her eyes, saw it all again. “It was a hot time to be a Human being.” She smiled knowingly. “I was born Human.”