Spring 2007

by Subterranean Press

  He found his way to the center of the city, stopping only for the briefest glimpses from beneath his mask. The streets were clear at the centers but the verges were a jumble of rubble and dirt. Redwater seemed to be built on a radial plan. This was just as he had expected from looking at the city from a distance. Not to mention being consistent with the psychology of a religious center.

  Running on all fours, Ervin found that he was more adapted to the curious gait. He trusted his finely-honed body to meet any challenge required of it. This was near his limits, though. He was pleased how well he was settling in.

  Let the Borgans fear the leopard!

  Soon enough he was in the central plaza. The dim light of the moonless night meant the temple bulked large as if it were new-built. It was difficult to see the signs of ruin here.

  He bounded up the wide, shallow steps toward gaping black maws which had once been doors. Inside he would shed the skin and move deftly on two feet, as man was meant to. Ervin paused at the top of the steps, turned to face the empty city, and on an impulse released a great roar which echoed over the stone rooftops.

  Much to his surprise, there was an answer to his challenge from nearby.

  His blood ran hot. His vision flashed red a moment, while the hair on his body stood up. Once more he was confronted with a true leopard while unprepared to fight like man or beast! He had not considered that the scene by the creek might repeat itself.

  There was nothing for it but to roar out his challenge once more.

  This time the animal trotted into the square. The creature was a lighter shadow in the inky pools of blackness. He could see it pause, settle onto its haunches and issue another mighty challenge. The cat was insolent, he would give it that.

  Then it leapt forward, racing up the stairs. Ervin stood to meet it and found he could not. The wicker and the pelt bound him too tightly. He snarled and hurled himself down the stairs on all fours, tail lashing.

  The two sabretooth leopards collided in a snarling ball of fur and claws and teeth. They rolled back down into the plaza, each seeking a grip on the other’s throat. Ervin slashed with his claws, laying open his attacker’s flank. Then he realized what was happening.

  He had become the leopard.

  Skin changer indeed.

  Even in another body, his spirit was a finely-honed weapon, his intellect dedicated to fine and brutal arts of combat. His muscles seemed to know what was wanted of him in this new form. His human self within did not know how to lose. Someday, when death claimed him at sword point or bloody-toothed, Ervin would die winning.

  She (for he was suddenly all too keenly aware that the other was a leopardess) caught her foreclaws in his chest. His great back legs came into play and he hooked her in the belly.

  They rolled again to fetch up against the broken base of some fountain. He snapped at her neck, just missing, as she tried to wiggle out of his hold. Then she bit at him, catching the skin.

  Their muzzles nearly touched in an eerie feline imitation of a human kiss. With that thought he found himself in his own form once more. The sensation of the change was elastic and electrifying, much like the touch of arcane scientific forces which had first projected him to this world.

  Was skin changing nothing more than some ancient weapon? Perhaps the same which imposed the strictures of the curse.

  In that same moment the leopardess writhed and changed to a woman. She was voluptuous, with bosoms each bigger than the span of his outstretched hand. Her female form was completely unclothed save for a bath of sweat and blood from the scratches he had laid upon her.

  As distracting as her scent and proximate nudity might be, Ervin did not for a moment lose sight of the fact that they had just been fighting a battle to the death. He pinned her, his strength in human form far superior to her distaff physique.

  “You have the advantage of me, ma’am,” he growled, some trace of the leopard’s roar still in his voice.

  “You are the outlander,” she replied.

  “Jacob Ervin, at your service.”

  She thrust her groin against him. “Truly?”

  “Later, perhaps.” He grinned. Ervin was not a man to be distracted by the rushing of blood to his nether parts. “Why did you seek to kill me?”

  “It was you who gave challenge.”

  “Truce?”

  She nodded. “Truce.”

  They both stood, stretching sore and wounded muscles. Ervin’s own carefully constructed wickerwork and hide was shredded. The woman seemed to have nothing but her skin. She also possessed the refreshing unselfconsciousness of the primitive. Her beauty was clothing enough.

  “It is my plan to go within and retrieve the leopard’s paw,” he told her. “Are you set on stopping me?”

  “I am afraid I cannot allow that,” she said.

  “Why do you defend this place? It is nothing but dead stone and ashes.”

  She shrugged. “Why do you attack it?”

  “Because those who care about it are too craven. I would make them an example of my courage.”

  “Then be brave,” she said. She touched the bottom of his chin. “Do not throw away your life, Jacob Ervin.”

  He stepped back, admiring her sweat-slicked form gleaming in the starlight. Had there been a moon this night he might have seen every curve and fold of her glorious body, but this was enough. Ervin thought he understood who this woman was.

  Turning away from her, he ignored his own turgidity. She would follow or not. He would deal with her or not. His hearing was as superb and finely honed as the rest of his physique, and so he listened as his foot touched the first step.

  There was a sort of rustle. She was returning to form.

  A second step, and he heard a rush of air as she sprung off her back feet.

  A third step, and he knew she would drop to bite the back of his head, as these cats did.

  Ervin spun around, swinging his mighty fist at the spot in the air where he knew her skull must pass. She snapped her great fangs, her breath hot and close enough to fill his nose, but the blow of his hammer hand broke her skull.

  The leopardess collapsed into the steps in a steaming heap. She kicked twice, then melted, fading to old bones and tattered fur.

  “No clothing, no fur,” he told the corpse as it receded through the generations of time back toward the sacking of the city. “A man needs scraps to become a leopard. But when a leopard becomes a man, well… You should have been less quick to fight.”

  Such a waste, he thought. She had been beautiful in both her forms.

  He turned his attention to the temple, stepping into the shadows within to search for the leopard’s paw.

  ###

  Dawn found him walking from the ruins of Redwater upright as a man should. The leopard’s paw was heavy in his hand. It was a large nugget of gold, roughly in the shape of its namesake, with three white crystals where the claws might be.

  His greater treasure, though, was the weathered skull he’d found on the bottom of the temple steps when he exited. She had aged her years in dying, and so this bone was three generations old. But when Ervin raised his standard and took the tribes north to make war against the buzzard men from beyond the wall, the leopardess would watch over him.

  A shame, he thought. He should have sampled her kiss when he had the chance. Ervin was certain he’d never meet her like again.

  He turned, looking at the city as it rose in dawn’s red glare, and gave one last, echoing roar. Thanks, apologies, tribute to a fallen foe. It was of no real account. Only the next battle mattered.

  Fiction The Lost Continent of Moo: A Lucifer Jones Story by Mike Resnick

  Part I

  You know, there’s one thing I ain’t never figgered out, and man and boy it’s been bothering me most of my blameless life, and even now as a old man I haven’t come up with an answer, and I’ve had a lot of time to think about it since it was always happening to me, even back in 1935 which is when the tale I’m telling you took pla
ce, and though I’ve wandered the face of five continents (or maybe seven, if you count them two little ones down south) I still don’t know why it takes me such a short time to get lost and such a long time to get found again.

  In fact, that was my very thought as I left Cornelius MacNamarra’s chartreuse mansions behind me and mosied alongside the Amazon, waiting for civilization to raise its head so I could get together with it and finally get around to the serious business of building the Tabernacle of Saint Luke. But the closest I came to civilization in the next week was a couple of little fellers who were wearing paint on their faces and not much else. They didn’t speak no known language, which is something they had in common with the French, and they kept staring at me as if they were wondering how my head would look in their trophy case, so I finally took my leave of them.

  I wish I could have took my leave of everything else, because I kept getting et by mosquitos and hissed at by snakes and growled at by jaguars and giggled at by monkeys, and after I’d footslogged maybe another hundred miles and still hadn’t seen no shining cities filled to overflowing with sinners who were in desperate need of a man of the cloth like myself, I figgered maybe the cities had all migrated to the south when no one was looking, so I took a left turn and put the Amazon River behind me.

  Now, I knew South America had a bunch of cities even back then, places like Rio and Buenos Aires and Caracas and Saigon, but it was like they’d seen me coming and had all tiptoed away before I could lay eyes on any of ‘em. I picked up a female companion named Petunia along the way. She was a real good listener, but she didn’t say nothing and she smelled just terrible, especially after a rainstorm (of which we had an awful lot), and after a few days I finally had to admit that I just didn’t have much in common with lady tapirs, and we parted ways.

  I kept trudging along, keeping my spirits up by reading my well-worn copy of the Good Book, and finally, after another couple of weeks, the forest started retreating, the mosquitos found other things to do, the animals took umbrage when I kept reciting the Eighth and Fourteenth Commandments at ‘em, and even the rain decided it had urgent business elsewhere. The land flattened out, the sun came out of hiding, and suddenly I was in this pasture that must have been a couple of hundred miles long, give or take a few inches.

  And as I looked over my surroundings, I began to realize that this wasn’t like no part of South America I had ever seen, and I’d seen an awful lot of it, starting with San Palmero and working my way through the Island of Annoyed Souls and this big wet area everyone called the Amazon Basin though I didn’t see nary a single wash basin, with or without no love-starved amazons, the whole time I was walking through it.

  I kept looking around and thinking that maybe I’d fallen asleep and sleptwalked to some new country. I was still mulling on it when I realized I’d been walking forever and a day, and I decided to lay down right on the grass, and if there’d been a desk clerk I’d have told him not to wake me til maybe half past Tuesday, and then I was snoring to beat the band.

  I woke up when something kind of cold and sort of wet and more than a little bit pushy rubbed against my face.

  “I’m sleeping,” I said.

  It nudged me kind of gently.

  “Go away,” I said, scrunching up my eyes. “It’s a holiday somewhere in the world. I’ll get a job tomorrow.”

  Then whatever it was pressed right up against my ear and said

  “Moo!”

  “What in tarnation was that?” I bellowed, jumping to my feet.

  Suddenly I heard a dozen more moos, and I looked around, and damned if I wasn’t surrounded by some of the fattest cows I’d ever seen. There were hundreds of ‘em, maybe thousands, and they’d all snuck on me my while I was sleeping.

  And then I thought, well, maybe they didn’t exactly sneak up. Maybe they live here.

  “Moo!” said a few dozen of ‘em, staring at me with big brown cows’ eyes, as if they were begging me to come on over and choose a steak for dinner.

  And then, being a educated man, I remembered my history books, or at least some stories I’d heard in Red Charlie’s Waterfront Bar in Macao, which comes to almost the same thing, and I realized that somehow or other I had stumbled onto a new land what no one else had ever seen before, and it didn’t take but forty or fifty more cows joining the chorus to for me to figger out that I was probably the first white man ever to set foot on the Lost Continent of Moo what had been writ up in fable, song and story.

  I looked off into the distance, hoping to see a shining city filled with Moovians or whatever they called themselves, where I could build my tabernacle and set up shop, but there wasn’t nothing out there but cows. Now, I knew there had to be people somewhere, because in all my experience I ain’t never come across a cow that could sing songs or tell stories about lost continents.

  And while we’re speaking of lost continents, them of you what’s read Encounters, the story of my attempt to bring the word of the Lord to the sinful nations of Europe, will know right off the bat that this here wasn’t the first lost continent I discovered. In fact, it seems that one of the things I’m really good at, other than helping poor sinners (and especially fallen women) see the light and the glory, is finding lost continents. It ain’t generally known–and if fact if you didn’t read my book it probably ain’t known at all–but not only did I find the lost continent of Atlantis, I actually bought it. Of course, it was buried under a few fathoms of water, but I’d be there still if the Greek government hadn’t objected to my placing a bunch of ads in the local paper offering to sell lots with a Mediterranean view. But that’s another story, and one what’s already been told with grace and elegance.

  Anyway, after I’d wandered a couple of miles, stepping in all kinds of things that a gentleman would never discuss with you except to say they were vile and foul-smelling and mostly plentiful, I heard a shout off to my left. I turned and saw a guy riding up on a horse. He was kind of dressed like a cowboy, except for the chaps and the belt and the shirt and the hat, and he galloped up to me, and then just when I was sure he’d escaped from some hospital for the pixilated and thunk I was a polo ball or whatever it is that they hit with them sticks, he pulled his horse to a stop and said something to me in some alien tongue.

  “I don’t understand a word you’re saying, Brother,” I replied, “but allow me to introduce myself. I’m the Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones, and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  He jabbered something else I couldn’t follow.

  “Before we resort to sign language, Brother,” I said, “perhaps you could tell me if I’ve indeed stumbled onto the lost continent of ancient legend.”

  As I said it, I indicated the land with a wave of my hand, and cocked an eyebrow so he’d know I was asking a question.

  It worked, because he shot me a friendly smile and said, “Pampas”, which I figgered was how they said Moo in Mooish.

  “Thanks, Brother,” I said. “And now I wonder if you can tell me where I can find the king of Moo?”

  He just stared at me, puzzled, and then I realized I’d made a simple mistake.

  “Strike that, Brother,” I said. “Where can I find the king of Pampas?”

  He kind of frowned, and I began thinking that my initial appraisal was right, except maybe for the polo part.

  “Well, thanks anyway,” I said, “but I can’t waste no more time here. I got to scout up the people and start bringing the Word to any godless sinners I find among ‘em, so I guess I’ll be going now.” I gave his horse’s neck a friendly pat, and noticed some weird kind of trinket he had with a ball attached to each end.

  He saw me staring at it, and said “Bolas.”

  “Thanks, Brother,” I said. Then, remembering my manners, I added “And bolas to you too.”

  I headed off to my right, but he immediately urged his horse forward and blocked my way. Then he started jabbering at me and pointing to my left. I looked where he was pointing, and all I could see wa
s maybe twenty thousand cows, give or take a couple.

  “That’s mighty considerate of you, Brother, but I’m looking for sinners of the two-legged kind,” I told him. “Besides, mighty few cows contribute to the poor box, and that’s a serious consideration when you’re figuring out where to build your tabernacle.”

  I walked around his horse and began heading off again, and again he blocked my way.

  “Just what seems to be your problem, Brother?” I said, starting to get a bit riled.

  He began talking a blue streak, but I didn’t hear no familiar words like “pampas” or “bolas”, and finally I held up my hand for silence.

  “I appreciate your concern,” I said, “and as near as I can figger it, either you think I’m here to convert your cattle, or I look so hungry you want me to take a couple of hundred cows home with me, or–and now that I come to think of it, them first two don’t hold a candle to the next reason, which is that you got all your womenfolk stashed in the direction I’m going.” I gave him a reassuring smile. “You don’t have to worry none, Brother. The way I smell after walking through your pasture, I doubt that any woman of quality would let me get near her–and if she would, that just means she’s been stepping in all this stuff too, and I ain’t wildly interested in getting much closer than fifty feet to her, or maybe a hundred, depending on which way the wind’s blowing.”

  I began walking yet again, and this time he just sighed and frowned and shook his head, and finally he dug his spurs into his horse and headed off toward all the cattle he’d been trying to introduce me to.

  It took me a whole day and a night to get out of that cow pasture, but finally I came to what was either a large rocky hill or a small rocky mountain, and I followed a footpath up it, and pretty soon I became aware that I was being watched by unseen eyes, which in my broad experience are just about the worst kind of eyes to be watched by, and finally the footpath widened a bit, and suddenly I was facing a mighty impressive stone building which sure didn’t resemble no other building I’d ever seen. Of course, the 200 naked warriors, each of ‘em with a spear and an expression that would have meant their shorts were too tight if any of ‘em had been wearing shorts, might have had a little something to do with it.