The Shadow and Night (38 page)

Below, the strange creatures continued to do nothing. Merral tried to call them
animals
in his mind, but the word did not seem right. He was certain that whatever they were, they were more than animals. The word
creatures
seemed more appropriate, but he wondered exactly whose creatures they were. Had they been fashioned by God, man, or the devil? If they were produced by either of the latter, he felt less guilty about killing one. But could the enemy make such things? And in this age of history?

His thoughts were interrupted by Vero's return. “Still there?”

“They haven't moved. So what's our situation?”

“Hmm. Well, we could be in a worse situation. There is really only access on two points: one we came up, and the other—almost opposite—on the western side. At our south, we go straight off the entire Daggart Plateau. It's a nasty drop: hundreds of meters. The north end appears vertical too, of course not as high. So, I think we only have two points to guard. But it's pretty bleak here. No water, no vegetation—just rock. Still, we must be grateful that it is not scorchingly hot. Although it is warming up.”

“No caves? lava tubes?”

“Other than the fact that there is a low ledge on the southern side, what you see is all we have.”

Merral surveyed again the flat, almost horizontal, plain of the summit surface. There were cracks in it in which a mouse or even a fox might hide, but nothing larger.

“Now,” said Vero, “let's look at your foot. Do you think we can get the boot off without a painkiller?”

“Let's try.”

Merral flinched as the straps were undone and Vero pried the boot off. He looked down to see that his sock was a mass of blood.

Vero reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small medical kit. He bent down and peered at the ankle.

“In the Divine mercy, the thing seems to have struck your boot more than your ankle, so it was unable to close tight around it. That extraordinary blade finger-thumb arrangement was sharp, but the wound is by no means as deep as it might have been. Here goes.”

Vero carefully exposed the flesh of the ankle and stared at it. “Not too bad. It has almost stopped bleeding. But you can see that it has actually cut partly through the dura-polymer shell of the upper boot sleeve. You would think it had been done with a knife.”

Vero washed the wound with a small amount of water, powdered it with a multi-potent wound powder, and then closed it with a self-suturing tape.

“That should be fine, unless they use some slow-acting toxin unknown to science. Let's hope it washed its hands regularly.”

“Ugh!” said Merral, relieved that the wound was no worse. “Actually, that feels better already. I think I'll try and put my sock and boot back on. This isn't terrain for going barefoot in.”

Vero went and peered over the edge again and came back while Merral was painfully putting his boot on.

“They are still waiting under the trees. Like machines. How do you feel?”

“The wound's okay,” Merral answered. “But inside I feel lousy.”

“I'm not surprised. I'm pretty shaken.”

“I was terrified, Vero! I mean it; it was extraordinary! But there was more than that; I killed something there. Something sentient, alive, thinking. More than an animal. It's awful!”

Vero scratched an ear thoughtfully. “No, we—
you—
had no choice. I am totally convinced it was evil. But I understand your feelings. It was, though, an impressive action of yours. I would have slashed and slashed until I was exhausted. Why did you strike it there?”

“After my first blow bounced off, I realized that it was armored, shelled. Then—I suppose—I realized that there looked like there was thinner or missing armor just below the throat. I guess it made sense too; you can't have thick armor everywhere. So when the opportunity came . . .” He ran out of words.

“You have a gift.”

“A gift! That is the stupidest thing you've ever said. A gift for killing!” Merral was surprised at the force and bitterness of his own voice.

Vero flinched and then began to speak again slowly. “But, my friend, if evil has returned in force, then there may be a place for such things. Many of the Old Covenant writers praise such skills.”

Merral, calming down, remembered some of the troubling verses in the Psalms that he had passed over as “of mainly historical significance only.”

“Maybe,” he muttered.

“Besides, even though you were terrified, you analyzed the situation brilliantly and acted on it. To evaluate rightly and to act in a crisis is a gift.”

“Well, if you say so.”

“I do. I was a failure.”

“Come on, Vero. You were badly shaken. And you distracted it so that I had a chance.”

“Teamwork, Forester. Just like your Team-Ball games. But let's see what we have to defend ourselves with.”

Vero took his jacket off and began opening the one remaining backpack. “Three flares,” he announced and laid out the three stubby tubes next to his bush knife.

“And I have the tranquilizer gun,” Merral said, taking off his jacket and finding the gun in his pocket.

“I'm relieved. I thought we had left that behind.” Vero shook his head ruefully. “You know, it was a folly of mine leaving that pack behind. We had extra water in it, spare food, other things. . . .”

Merral felt sorry for him. “Vero, you can't blame yourself. This is a unique situation. We needed to get out of there quickly.”

“I suppose you are right.” Vero frowned. “Funny, I've never really felt guilty about anything before. Perhaps this spiritual atmosphere—whatever we call it—is getting to me too.”

He was silent for a few moments. “But enough about the past. We have few weapons to defend us. Let us make twin stockpiles of rocks at either possible site of attack. Gravity can aid us. We must be prepared to use them to dissuade any attacker.”

He looked up at the sky. “I do think, though, it will be the night when we are attacked. Whether they fear the sun or whether they are just wary of being caught on any satellite or plane images, I do not know.”

Over the next half hour, as the remaining clouds disappeared and the top of the hill began to become warm in the sunshine, they scoured the surface of the plateau for hand-sized fragments of rock. They piled these up above the two points on the cliff edge where it seemed possible that an attack could come. Twice, Merral and Vero tried to make emergency calls, but each time, although incoming signals could be received, their diary messages out seemed to be blocked. They did find out that over distances of a few centimeters they could transmit between diaries, but beyond that any signal was disrupted.

“Formidable!” Vero commented. “I think whatever frequency we broadcast on they pick it up and absorb the signal within a few microseconds. I wonder what other technology they have? No wonder they are happy enough sitting under the trees waiting.”

Then they took out the fieldscope, which somehow had not been left behind, and spent some minutes watching the creatures below. With the sun now shining with undiminished force, their pursuers had retreated a few meters farther back so that they were under the shade of a large pine. Merral watched them with the scope, trying to assimilate some understanding of what they were. The strange heads of the ape-creatures, with their angled, almost noseless front and the marked overhang of the skull at the rear, struck Merral as odd.
It is almost as if a human skull had been sculpted in wet clay and then—somehow—a board pressed against the front so that the whole upper part was deformed backward.
Once he caught a glimpse of a wide-open mouth with two arcs of large, dirty whitish teeth.
Are they vegetarians or carnivores?
he wondered unhappily.

Vero spoke quietly. “So, Forester, what do you think?”

“These ape things—I am struggling for a name—seem much less strange than the other kind. These seem to be bad imitations of humans or gorillas. The other thing seemed just, well . . . weird. These I would classify as mammals, which fits with the DNA results. But what do you think?”

“I agree these things look like mammals, but do they—I ask you—have the organs diagnostic of mammals?”

Merral scanned the three as they sat on the ground. “I see no breasts. Perhaps all three are male?”

“Ah. But do you see any indication of the diagnostic organs of maleness?”

“Interesting. No, there seems to be an absence of external genitalia of any sort. I should have observed that. Are they sexless?”

Vero shrugged. “I do not know. If they are, that raises other questions. But this morning's other creature?”

“Not as easy,” Merral answered, overcoming a reluctance to think about his assailant. “Definitely animal, but I can go no further. It fits into no known category of biological classification. There were elements of mammal and insect in it. That beetle-like exoskeleton is what puzzles me.”

“And me. What do we call these two sorts of creature?”

Merral thought for a moment. “ ‘The naming of animals'? These things are ‘ape-creatures.' ”

“I agree. And ‘cockroach-creatures'?”

“No. I am unhappy about
creature.
”

Vero nodded. “Very well. I suggest that we borrow the Ancient English word
beast.
”

To Merral, the word had echoes of the Dark Times with its wars and horrors, but then he realized that any such allusions were now strangely appropriate. “So be it,” he agreed.

“The cockroach-beast: the puzzle creature, the fusion of man and cockroach.”

“A disgusting thought.”

“I agree. Anyway, I shall take some images of these ape-creatures and dictate some notes. God willing, I will be able to transmit it to Anya in some way. And then onward. . . .” Vero paused and gestured with a thumb in the vague direction of Isterrane. “It just occurred to me: when will Anya start to get concerned about us?”

“No earlier than eight, when she finds she cannot get through to us.”

“What do you think she will do?”

“I don't know,” Merral answered slowly. “We can only hope she gets worried and asks for a search team to come in. Fast. Then we fire the flares and they pick us up.”

Vero nodded thoughtfully. “Let us indeed pray it is so.”

While Vero linked his diary to the fieldscope and imaged the ape-creatures, Merral walked slowly around the perimeter of the hilltop, conscious of his aching ankle. He was becoming uneasily aware that the summit that he had thought might be their refuge was now in danger of becoming their prison. He paused at the southern edge of the cliff, noting the ledge that Vero had seen, and gazed southward over the dizzying drop off the plateau. Far below he could see where they had camped the previous night and traced the river southward until it disappeared into the haze. His eye caught the dark crescent-winged swifts as, with their effortless mastery of the air, they soared, dived, and raced noisily off the cliff edge. Merral decided that at this moment he would have given a lot to be able to fly as they could.

As he watched, the swifts suddenly scattered in every direction with wild screaming noises. Merral glanced up to see, high above him, a large, stiff-winged bird gliding round in slow circles.
A raptor of some sort,
he thought, shading his eyes as he stared at it. He decided it was a buzzard and was puzzled by the reaction of the swifts; unlike some of the faster falcons, the slow buzzards posed no threat to swifts. He made a mental note to discuss it with Lesley Manalfi, the Planning Institute's head ornithologist, then reality flowed back and he realized that he had more pressing biological problems than aberrant bird behavior.

“Now what?” he asked Vero on his return.

“Now, we sit and wait and think and pray,” came the solemn answer. “We have almost no water left, a little food. And no shade.”

Merral sat down beside him and pulled his jacket over his head to gain some protection from the sun. So as the hours passed and the rocks around grew warmer, Merral sat there hunched under the jacket with the sweat dripping down his face, conserving his energy and praying, in a way he had never remotely imagined he would ever have to, for deliverance.

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