by Robert Adams
"We don't need the half-man, half-dog things!" snapped Squash Woman. "We still have things that they don't have—the thunder-logs."
"Not anymore, you don't," said Mike, coldly. "The cannon and the swivel guns are all over at the fort, now."
Squash Woman licked suddenly dry lips with a dark tongue-tip. "But Arsen-silver-hat and the rest of you silver hats, you will quickly kill or rout the subhuman Creeks just as you did all of the slave raiders. You must—the Great Spirit sent you to protect us and care for us, forever. You will lie in your silver boats and sit in your moving-swimming-smoking huts the color of dark earth and you will kill all of the Creek warriors, that we people may enslave the women and children and slay the old, useless ones and take all of their goods; the Great Spirit sent you to protect us and see to our needs. This is a need, Arsen-silver-hat, and I, the Eldest of the only True Human Beings, command that you do it! For it is only fitting and proper that sub-men be the slaves and chattels of true people. That is the will of the Great Spirit."
"Sieg Heil!" said John, dryly, starting to hum under his breath what he could recall of the "Horst Wessel Lied."
"Oh, no, Squash Woman," declared Arsen. "Uh-uh, no fucking way, baby! Yes, we'll fight off the Spanish whenever we have to and as many times over as we have to, but that's because they're a severe threat to all Indians, not just to you Shawnees. But, you slimy, lying, greedy old douche-bag cooze, you refuse to let the Micco take over the council or go and pick a fight with the Creeks, then you're on your fucking own. We'll just sit back and watch them go through you and your pitiful few braves like shit through a fucking goose. Then us and the Micco and the Creeks will go on up to that valley and what they leave of you lazy, helpless fucking Shawnees can sit here and moan and wait for the Spanish to come back. You try explaining to those boys about how you're the only real human beings and they're just half-men and see how fucking far it gets you, hear?"
Shaking all over, tears cascading down over her wrinkled face, Squash Woman turned to Lisa, saying plaintively, her voice cracking now and again, all her former arrogance flown away, "Please, Ilsa Brighthair, make the silver hats help my people. And even if they will not, sunk deep into their evil spirits as they now are, you can use your own silver boat to help us, can't you?"
Lisa looked at her coolly and said in frigid tones, "I could . . . but I won't, Squash Woman. Arsen is right in this. You have lied to us for long months, used us very selfishly. You and the other elders have hurt your own people by not urging them to garden and gather and hunt and preserve food for the winter. Such elders as you all have proved yourselves to be are in no way wise, rather are you all real, dangerous liabilities to your people and should not be allowed to longer hold power over them or ever again to gain power."
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
Two weeks after the Micco, Snake-burnt-at-both-ends, his council, and a few well-chosen elders from the Shawnee had taken over from Squash Woman and her coterie of nodding stooges, the aged ruler sent a runner for Arsen, of an early evening twilight.
After Arsen had taken as shallow a pull as he could, in courtesy, manage at the foul, ill-cured tobacco stuffed into the ceremonial pipe, then passed it on, trying very hard to not cough and thus possibly give insult, the Micco got down to business.
"Arsen-silver-hat, wide as my hunters range, numerous as are the set traps for smaller beasts, hard as do the fishers and the gatherers and the gardeners work, still is there not enough food in this camp every day and we must accept your bounty right often, a thing which pains my heart."
"Look, Micco," said Arsen, "it's not any longer like it was when that damned old con artist Squash Woman was running things, see. You guys don't ask for much—leastways, you haven't yet—and I'll do whatever I have to to help you make it, no sweat, don't you worry about that. You tell me what you need and when you need it and I'll bust my ass to see you have it, hear?"
"Yes, you are indeed a good man, Arsen-silver-hat," the Micco nodded, sagely. "But it is far better that the people do for themselves whenever they can, lest they become as one with the Guales, who would all starve without the steel-breasts."
"Arsen-silver-hat, you have silver eggs that can transport great bundles of long, very thick trees many miles and easily, or can bring in to the place you are building heaps of flat stones so heavy that a hundred strong braves all together could not raise one of those heaps even a hand-breadth from off the ground."
"Yes, Micco." Arsen nodded. "Those are called projectors."
"Hmm, a rare word," commented the Micco, then asked, "Then can these projectors also convey safely living men and dead beasts?"
"They can, Micco," replied Arsen. "I used one such to send the young warriors back down to your lands from here, in fact. Why do you ask this?"
"Arsen-silver-hat," was the Micco's answer, "Swift Otter, here, tells us that for long after his people crossed the mountains and left the sacred Land of the Guardian, Thunderbird, they yearly sent large, strong hunting parties into that land to camp in the unsacred mountains above it and descend into the sacred precincts to slay the beasts. They then bore the carcasses back up to their mountain camps to dry or smoke the meat and dress the skins or hides to provision the tribe during the winter months and the early spring, before most plants could be eaten."
"But in more recent generations, most of the Shawnee roamed too far from the mountains to make such hunts practical. And even more recently, they have been so shrunken and weakened by the steel-breast raiders and slavers that they would not have been able to send enough hunters to bear back sufficient food to make the whole, long process worth the effort."
"Now, however, we have more than a hundred and half a hundred warrior hunters, most of them with the fine, straight-throwing guns you so generously gave and the rest with the heavier ones taken from the steel-breasts either by us when we still lived in the south or by you when you fought the steel-breast slavers and drove them back down this river, so I would begin sending hunters into the sacred land, again."
"But, Micco," said Arsen, wonderingly, "I thought it was a sin to live in that land? That's what you and your shaman and Squash Woman all said."
Nodding again. The Micco said, "Yes, to live within the Land of the Thunderbird is forbidden, but the Guardian understands the needs of men, too. He knows that, like all the beasts, man must eat in order to continue living. All of the old tales tell us that although man is forbidden to live there, he is allowed to hunt the beasts there."
"Now, while those ancient Shawnees camped in the mountains above the sacred land and could only bring back the best parts of their kills, we are blessed by the Great Spirit with you and the other silver hats and your wonderful projectors. Our hunters can be sent there, by you—if you will?—and make their kills and then be sent back here with them, all in a day. This would provide all of us with meat, hides, sinew, horn, and many another thing we need now, will need for the coming winter and will need for the spring journey up to the long, narrow valley."
Arsen reflected that he could combine the projections of the hunting parties with his own trips to the granite quarry, and even had he not been quarrying there, almost anything was better than any further raids on that abattoir. The last time, he'd been seen and shot at by a guard, and only the protective field of the carrier had prevented his likely fatal perforation by one or more of the slugs from the big—either .44 or .45 caliber—revolver. And he had only, one or two pieces of the gold which he had been leaving behind to cover the worth of things he took from his natal world left, anyway; so, many more trips and he'd have to be outright stealing stuff.
There was not as much game on the north side of the river, where the granite outcropped, as there was on the south, so Arsen put the first hunting party—forty-two Creek braves, nine Shawnees, Simon Delahaye, and Greg Sinclair—down about halfway between the ruins and the edge of the great plain whereon the bison and the horses always grazed. Greg, having been "educated" by the carriers he so often used for pa
trolling the river course and timbering occasionally, had the Class Seven projector and knew how to properly use it, so as kills were made, he would project them and a few of the hunters back to the village. Arsen, with the Class Five projector, would be sending back smaller heaps of stone than usual that day. They had suspended timbering operations for the length of the hunt.
Even with the metal wand that the carrier instructor had told Arsen how to fashion in the benighted lab of his father's business in his own world, even with the Class Five projector to lift and to stack the stones that the wand cut out and shaped and smoothed with only the twistings of his wrist and the pressings of his fingers, Arsen still got hot in the close, almost enclosed spot, the ancient quarry of those who had built the ruins south of the river, so he customarily worked with as little on above the waist as possible, preferring the occasional insect bite to the smothered feeling of wearing shin, T-shirt, and pistol belt. In all the time he had been working here, the largest beasts of any kind he had seen had been one or two nonpoisonous snakes, a large toad, and a few flashing streaks of lizards among the rock rubble, so he had come to feel that lugging along the pistol was probably stupid anyhow.
He had projected maybe a ton and a half of granite slabs by mid-afternoon and had just made a decision to call it quits after the stack on which he was working was projected off, for the blue sky had clouded over completely, the sun was no longer to be seen through them, and he was bedamned if he intended to work in the rain in a place where clear watermarks showed that it had held deep pools of water, in times past.
He was bending to slice off a knob of rock he had missed on a corner of the topmost stacked slab when he heard a faint noise that seemed to emanate from somewhere behind and above him and, at the same time, the stench registered in his nostrils. It was a terrible stench, reminding him of nothing so much as a jungle battlefield after the corpses had had two days of hot sun to rot them well.
Whirling about, he spied pure horror crouching on a ledge some five or so feet above him. Man-shaped in some ways, the thing was squatting on its heels, glaring down at Arsen with slitted eyes. Its arms were overlong and as hairy as all the rest of its thick, massive body, except for its face and slightly projecting, long-fanged muzzle. The creature's upper canine teeth were at least two inches in length, Arsen figured, and the thick arms and hunched shoulders onto which the big head seemed to fit without any neck denoted terrible strength.
Arsen eased down his wand to hang from the lanyard around his neck and slowly reached down to his right waist . . . only to remember that the pistol was still in its holster on the pistol belt in the open carrier. He thought the thought required to trigger the silver helmet to summon the carrier over to him, he thought it twice before he remembered with chagrin that the helmet, too, was reposing in the carrier along with his shirt, T-shirt, pistol belt, and all.
The stinking, hairy thing just hunkered there, staring slit-eyed at him, now and then gaping its mouth to show its full set of fearsome fangs and big teeth, all a sort of orangy-white and the longest ones sharply pointed—stabbing, tearing, predator fangs. Once it raised its muzzle skyward and uttered a long, loud cooing call.
Most of the thing's hair was a dark agouti color, but a crest of tall, stiff bristles ran from front to back on its scalp. With a shudder of real fear, Arsen remembered the story Squash Woman had told him and Lisa. About the huge, hairy, man-eating creatures that lived in caves and underground burrows in this land and hunted either at night or on dark overcast days (just like this one!) when there was no sunlight to hurt their dark-accustomed eyes. The old Shawnee woman had said that they were very difficult to kill, that they would leap over palisades at night, seize a human victim, and then leap back out again so quilled all over with arrows and darts that they looked much like man-shaped porcupines. It had been due to them and their ceaseless depredations that the Shawnee had left the Land of the Thunderbird, she had said.
"So, hell," he thought, trying to stop his teeth from chattering, "even if I can get back to the pistol, get it out, arm it and all, a .45 slug—shit, a whole fucking magazine full of the fuckers—may not be e-fucking-nough! If I live through this, I'll be fucked if I ever take that pistol off again, not over here in this damn place. And I'm going to take the carrier back to our old world, first fucking chance I get, and steal one of Uncle Boghos' fucking African elephant guns, too."
Moving ever . . . so . . . slowly, feeling his way among the rock rubble with his heels, Arsen backed up, keeping his gaze firmly locked on the hairy, crouching, salivating horror above him. Once he had covered a little distance, once he at least had put the shoulder-high stack of granite slabs between him and it, he felt just a little better. But then, seemingly without effort, the beast leaped atop the stack of granite.
A couple more slow, very careful steps, however, and Arsen felt the edge of the carrier bump against his rump. Still forcing himself to not make any sudden move, he felt behind him, searching either for the helmet which would allow him to trigger the carrier's protective shield, which would protect him too, this close to it, or his pistol. But all his frantic fingers could seem to locate was his shirts and the Class Five projector.
Fingering the device, he pondered, "I wonder if . . . ? Hell, it's at least a hundred men in and around that fort, armed with ever fucking thing from knives and hatchets to cannons and M60 machine guns, too. If they can't kill one these stinking fuckers, nothing can."
Once the pile of granite slabs and its anthropoid passenger was on the way to the other side of the mountains, Arsen quickly dressed, put on the helmet, lay down in the carrier, closed the lid, and set out for the other side of the river. But less than two hundred yards from the quarry, he spotted four more of the manlike things, running full-tilt over the weed-grown, rocky ground in the direction of the quarry, moving almost four-legged and quite fast. Circling the carrier back, he came in low, behind the man-eaters, and, using one of the carrier's array of available armaments, exploded the big heads of all four. They were definitely not the kind of sidewalk superintendents he wanted overseeing his work over here.
He was fortunate enough to locate Greg and all the hunters not already projected back with kills standing in a defensive ring, all rifles pointed at a group of spotted lions who were stalking round and round, some seventy yards out from the men and the carcasses of a bison and two horses.
He landed near the bulk of dead bison and demanded, "Greg, why the fuck haven't you projected out of here, huh? At least project the fucking carcasses—that's what those toothy fuckers are really after."
"Oh, hell, no, Arsen," replied Greg enthusiastically. "Them's my bait, see. Without them, them lions would all probably just go away and I couldn't shoot one."
"Greg," said Arsen with obvious exasperation that he made no slightest effort to hide, "you out of your fucking what you call a mind, you know that? Greg, that fucking M14 is in no way a fucking big-game rifle, it wouldn't even stop one of the littler lions in Africa in our world, much less those spotted fuckers out there. They're eleven, twelve, thirteen feet long, Greg, and it's at least five of them. They'd take everything you bunch have got to shoot and still end up cleaning the fucking clocks of ever fucker too slow or dumb to run."
"Well, dammit, Arsen," Greg half-whined, "I want a good trophy to take back home to Fredericksburg with me when we fin'ly go back."
Arsen shook his head and said, "Not today, Greg, there's a fucking good reason, not today. Pick up the projector and beam you and Simon and ever other swinging dick back right now. I'll send the kills back with my Class Five. But wait a minute—go back loaded for bear. I had to send something big and very dangerous was on top of my last load of granite back to the fort with it."
Immediately the circle of braves, Greg, and Simon had winked out of sight, Arsen set the Class Five projector and sent the bison and one of the horses winking after them. He left the other horse for the felines. He had always had a fondness for cats of any kind, and, he figured, the
se had to eat, too.
Then he climbed back into the carrier and set out toward the southeast, at flank speed.
Arsen skimmed low over the last trees and angled the carrier down into the compound, headed for the stone crypt that he and Lisa now called home. But a line of limping, bleeding, cursing men was waiting to enter the crypt, and when he had pushed past them, he found Lisa, Greek John, and Rose Yacubian working in what looked like a front-line dressing station after an assault on the perimeter.
While John stitched up the scalp of a Creek Arsen recognized as one of Soaring Eagle's original group of braves, Lisa was giving an injection to another Creek brave with a compound fracture of a lower arm, while Rose worked with forceps, small surgical knife, and steady, if bloody, hands to remove innumerable splinters and bits of pine bark from the legs and buttocks of Haigh Panoshian, who was turning the air around them midnight-blue with a torrent of curses, obscenities, blasphemies, and depthless crudities, all interspersed with yelps and yips and other indications of pain.
Lisa was first to notice him. "Arsen, goddam, I'm glad you're back. I'm going to need your help to properly set and splint this poor bastard's arm, so go over there and wash up and find a pair of sterile gloves."
"What the hell happened?" he demanded, thinking that he just might know, anyway, "Did the Spanish attack or what, honey?"
Easing the already-groggy brave down onto a spread tarp, she shook her tousled blond head and said, "As best I can gather from the garbled bits and pieces I've heard, a hairy ape about the size of a gorilla suddenly showed up among the piles of stone and timber down below the fort. Nobody seems to really know exactly what happened, then or for the next few minutes, but I'd feel safe to say that all hell broke loose. I heard it from in here, and there must've been a hundred or more gunshots, then two or three cannon shots, all the Indians in the fort were shrieking out warcries, Al and Mike and Haigh were screaming unprintable things, then things just suddenly got almost quiet and they started bringing these hurt and wounded men in. Fortunately, John got back just in time from his patrol downriver; Rose and I couldn't have handled it alone, no way in hell."