The Totems of Abydos (53 page)

Brenner moved back, further.

The knapsack was now in pieces.

The beasts who had disputed it now sniffed it. Others, too, crept forward, to be warned away by menacing noises. One beast bit at another, and for a moment there was a flurry of snarling and biting. Then they had backed away from one another. One of the beasts looked up from the knapsack, and then it stepped over it, toward Brenner.

Brenner took another step back.

He raised the stick.

He looked into a yawning maw and thrust the stick at it. It tore into the side of the beast’s face and it drew back.

Brenner spun about. Another animal was quite near now. He struck down with the stick, slashing the beast across the nose and muzzle. Another approached and he jabbed out with the stick. It put up its paw, as though to fend it away. But Brenner had neither managed to touch the animal, nor had it touched the stick.

Brenner turned about and, crying out, thrust at another beast, which seized the stick in its jaws.

Brenner could not pull the stick from its jaws.

The beast gripped it near the end, that end emerging from the right side of its jaws.

Brenner pulled at the stick. He backed away. Forward was dragged the beast. The weight of the beast, which seemed fastened to the stick, was some seventy to eighty Commonworld pounds. It looked at Brenner with its left eye. Its jaws moved up an inch on the stick, and then, opening and closing, another inch, toward his hand. Brenner released the stick, and the stick, still gripped in the beast’s mouth, flew to the side, the animal turning fully about with it.

Brenner then turned and ran.

The animals hung about him, a few yards back, a few yards to the side, running with him, always leaving an open space before him. This action on Brenner’s part, not standing in one place, or not yet doing so, and moving, was familiar, and comprehensible, to them. It returned their world to its normal form. Before, when Brenner had seemed at bay, they had not been fully certain as to how to proceed. It was too early for the attack. It was too early for the kill, for the feeding. The movements of the thing were not erratic. It was not stumbling. It was not panting. It was not exhausted. It had not yet fallen, unable to move, its lungs sucking in air, its eyes wild, waiting for the fangs. But now things were as they should be. They padded along with Brenner. Tenacity and stamina were features of their life form. When it slowed down they would snarl and bite at its heels. They would try to keep it moving. They would try, even, after it had run further, to guide it back toward the den, that they might be nearer home when the kill was made.

This thing, they thought, is strange, as it has only two legs. But it does run. Not well. But it runs.

Too, it was strange, they thought, as it was already gasping.

This was not like the small, horned ones, the leaping ones, whose stamina almost matched their own, whose fleet, bounding gait was so difficult to match, which so often eluded them in the forests, the scents mixing with so many others. No, this chase would be short.

Brenner stumbled and he felt his leg slashed with teeth. Crying out, he rose to his feet, his trousers torn, his leg wet with blood and saliva. He ran on. His heart was pounding. It seemed he could not breathe. In his terror he was only vaguely aware of the pain in his body. It was like someone else was in agony. He struck into a tree. He saw another white stone. He ran toward it. I am going to Company Station, thought Brenner, wildly. I am going toward Company Station! I will see the gate! I will see the fence! But he knew, too, that he was days from Company Station.

Yes, it is nearly time, they thought, were they capable of such thoughts. But it has not lasted very long. This is a strange runner. It is too slow. It is no wonder there are so few of these in the forest.

Brenner spun about, his legs buckling. Things began to go black.

He began to sob and cry, and gasp for breath.

Then he found himself backed against an outcropping of rock.

Yes, there were seven of them. He could see that now. He counted them.

There was nowhere to run.

He covered his face with his arms and crouched down.

Yes, they thought, it is now time. And each thought, I must not delay, there are the others!

Brenner lifted his head from his folded arms, after a time.

He had not felt the charge, the rending, the tearing.

He looked about himself. There was no sign of the beasts. They had melted away, back into the shadows, through the trees, disappearing in the darkness.

It was very quiet.

He stepped away from the rock outcropping. He peered into the darkness. He turned about, and screamed.

On the rocks, above his head, not yards from where he had been, he saw a gigantic, terrible shape, a huge, monstrous, sinuous, catlike form. It was not so unlike the stealthy one which had seized Archimedes, except in its dimensions. It was sitting back on its haunches. Its broad head, with its sharp, erected ears, must have been twenty feet above the rocky level on which it sat. Brenner, with his arms outstretched, could not have begun to measure the span of its chest. Its eyes, which were large, were separated by some eighteen Commonworld inches. They were set forward on the face. It doubtless had excellent binocular vision. Its pupils were black, large and round. The creature seemed excellently adapted for night vision. Such eyes would not need the feeble aid of the lantern fruit. They would have served in darker, more terrible places. Yes, it was not unlike the stealthy one Brenner had seen, that on which Rodriguez had fired, missing his shot as the creature, alarmed, had leaped away. It, too, clear in all its lineaments, in the lithe, beautiful, savage form, was a predator. That it would live by killing, and the death of the slower, the weaker, the less clever, the less fierce, was visible in every inch of its frightening beauty. It was terrible in a way that was beyond ruthlessness or cruelty. It was terrible in a simple, natural way, as lightning is terrible, or fire, or storms. It, like the stealthy one, was a product of evolution, and the coming of kings and terrors, a product of what was to be fed upon and what must be done to obtain it, of how cunning one must be, how secret, how swift, how terrible. It, like the stealthy one, was a handiwork of nature, of nature in all its merciless innocence, and yet, it seemed, of a nature more terrible than that which, over thousands of years, had fashioned the sinews of the stealthy one. Brenner shuddered to conceive the nature that might produce such a shape, and being. This, thought Brenner, is that which is first in the forest. Here, in this world, this majestic horror is king. The smaller beasts, the humped, crested ones, the pack, had slunk away. They did not do contest with one such as this. With one such as this they would dispute nothing.

I am dead, thought Brenner. But he was awed, as well. Better, thought he, to be eaten by this, to serve such a king, than to die beneath the jaws of the pack, to be torn to pieces by the small ones, to die of a hundred wounds, to feel the lacerations of tinier, fouler teeth, to expire choking in fetid breath.

Brenner looked up at the beast above him. “I salute you,” he cried, lifting his hand to the beast. “I await you!” He tore open his shirt.

The beast looked down upon him.

“Kill me,” invited Brenner.

The beast did not move.

Brenner, in the ensuing interim, suddenly became very much aware of the pain in his body, of the soreness in his leg, where it had been bitten, of the blood in his boot, of how he was breathing heavily, of how his heart was pounding.

“Kill me!” called Brenner.

The beast turned its head to one side, and licked at the fur on its left shoulder.

The others disturbed it, thought Brenner suddenly. Its lair is about. It came out to see what was occurring. It may not be hungry. It may not recognize in me anything that it is accustomed to preying upon!

Brenner’s resignation to death, and the perhaps somewhat hysterical bravado which he had managed to muster up, perhaps somewhat belatedly, to face it, suddenly evaporated.

He took a step backward, and then another step.

At this point the beast looked up, observing him, and Brenner stopped.

They faced one another for a time, Brenner not knowing what to do. The best thing, he knew, was not to make eye contact. But that had occurred. Many encounters with predators, particularly with ones which were not hunting, were avoided by so simple an expedient as both turning about, each as though they had not seen the other, and going their own ways. Also, he must not approach within a certain critical distance. But he had already discovered the presence of the beast within what must surely count as a critical distance, that distance within which the beast is provoked to action, either to turn and flee or, in the case of one such as this, more likely, to charge. But Brenner had not been approaching it. That was a point. Indeed, he had drawn back a little.

Brenner stood very still.

Suddenly the beast put down its head a little, and hunched its shoulders, and snarled. That sound raised the hair on the back of Brenner’s neck.

Wise or not, Brenner then began to back rapidly away.

It just awakened, it is hungry, thought Brenner, in misery. Then, although it was surely not wise, he turned about, and ran. The foolishness of this, however, for flight tends to elicit pursuit, occurred almost immediately to him, and, miserable, he stopped, and turned about.

His heart sank as he saw the beast lightly, with a swiftness, and agility, and grace, that was odd in so large an animal, descend from the rock.

Brenner turned about and fled through the trees.

It was doubtless not wise, but sometimes one’s body makes such decisions for one, not taking the time to weigh the pros and cons involved. Reflection is often useful, and is doubtless to be accorded great respect. In certain cases, however, as when it betrays the animal, it can be the road to misery or death. Some ten minutes later Brenner, gasping, caught hold of a tree, to keep from falling, and looked about himself.

He was lost, of course, but, more importantly, from his point of view, was still alive. If one is not alive, it is not of great importance, after all, whether one is lost or not.

It did not follow me, thought Brenner. It is not hunting me. To be sure, it had descended from the rock. It might be about, somewhere.

It was rationally reassuring to Brenner that it had not brought him down already. Surely anything like that could outrun him, indeed, overtake him in a few bounds, and, too, it could presumably follow his scent, fresh as it was, if it were so inclined.

Whereas these reflections might have brought comfort to a fully rational mind, it must be conceded that Brenner, exhausted, frightened, lost in the dark, only recently having escaped from savage beasts, and having just encountered another, did not fully appreciate their weight.

That his trepidation might not be ill-founded was surely suggested, too, by what occurred almost immediately.

He had scarcely made his best judgment as to the direction of Company Station and started in that direction when, some forty yards ahead, amongst the trees, in the dim light of lantern fruit, he saw the form of the gigantic, catlike animal. It was standing. It must have been some fourteen feet high at the shoulder. It then growled. That sound, low and rumbling, seemed to come from deep within it. In its undulations, it was almost as if it were moving, rapidly crawling, toward him through the trees.

Brenner turned about, hurrying in the opposite direction. For a time the beast was behind him. Once Brenner picked up a rock and hurled it at the beast. He did not manage to strike it, which was perhaps just as well. Brenner also picked up another branch and tore away smaller branches and leaves from it. It might serve as a weapon. He wished he had the electric match which had been in his knapsack. He might then have managed to light some dried branch, and use it to thrust at the animal, if it approached too closely. To be sure, it may never have seen fire. Still it might not care to approach a light so bright, one contrasting so intensely with the darkness, one perhaps actually painful to look at, in its vision’s current dark-adjustment. Too, it might find the heat unpleasant, and an actual burn, particularly a severe one, would surely teach it quickly enough the menace, the power, of that bright, flickering stranger in its kingdom.

Then it seemed the beast was gone.

Perhaps it did not wish to risk being struck by the stick.

Perhaps it had lost interest in Brenner.

Perhaps it had been by coincidence that their paths had for a time been conjoined.

There were trails, of course, in the forest. Brenner might have been on one.

Brenner continued on his way. But now, no longer did he thrash through the brush, looking wildly back, plunging into shadows, witlessly toward anything that might be in the darkness. Now he moved with care. He frequently sought cover. He held the stick ready. He stopped often to listen, for little things, mostly, such as the resistances of dried leaves to the tread of soft paws, a breathing not his own. He stopped once, to look at his leg. It was no longer bleeding. He wrapped a kerchief about the wound, to protect it, but it would slip, and he ended, after a time, by thrusting it back in his pocket. He began to regret the loss of the knapsack, with its food. He became aware of how cold it was in the forest now, at night. He frequently looked behind himself. He saw no sign of the animal.