Fourteen

Tibor watched the evening change clothes about him, saw the landscape divide and depart, up and down, dark. How did it go, that desolate little poem? It was Rilke’s “Abend”:

He knows how I feel, he decided, to none belonging, not so surely promised to eternity as all this, confused, alone, afraid. If I could turn to stone and stars now, I would. The God of Wrath gave me legs and arms. He took them back again. Did that really happen? Yes, it did. I’m sure of it. Why did he give me limbs if I couldn’t keep them? Just to hold anything and feel it for a time would be so fine. I thought it was sadistic, but the Christian version is a masochist now that I think of it, a turning upon, oneself of all bad things, which is just as bad in its own way. He loves everybody, democratically, in fact relentlessly. But he created people so that they could not go through life without hurting him. He wanted something painful to love. They’re both of them sick. They have to be. How horrible I feel, how worthless. But I still don’t want to die. I am afraid to use the bullhorn again, though. Now that it is dark. No telling what might hear it and come now.

Tibor began to weep. The night sounds—chirps, buzzes, the dry rasping of twigs on bark—were smothered by his sobs.

There came a jolt and a creak, as an extra weight was added to his cart. Oh god! What’s that? he thought. I am totally helpless. I will have to lie here and let it eat me. It is too dark to see where I could even direct the extensor to defend myself. It’s somewhere behind me, advancing now—

He felt a cold, moist touch upon his neck, then fur. It came up beside him. It licked his cheek.

“Toby! Toby…”

It was the dog the lizards had given him. It had run off earlier, and he had assumed it was on its way back to its former owners. Now he saw the muzzle outlined against the sky, tongue rolling, teeth white, approximating a smile.

“You’ve stayed with me after all,” he said. “I don’t have anything to feed you. I hope you found something yourself. Stay with me. Curl up and sleep here beside me. Please. I’ll keep talking to you, Toby. Good dog, good dog… Sorry I can’t pet you. In this light, I might misjudge and crush your skull. Stay, though. Stay.

If I make it through the night, he thought… if I make it it’ll be because of you.

“I’ll reward you someday,” he promised the dog, who stirred at the emphatic tone of his voice. “I will save your life. If you save mine, if I am alive when help comes—I promise! If I am still living when you yourself are ever in danger, you will hear a roaring and a rushing, and a rolling, and the brush will churn! Leaves and dust will fly up, and you will know I am on my way, from wherever I am, to aid you! The thunder and violent rolling of my salvation of you will terrify anyone. I will protect you, cherish you, exactly as you are getting me through this night tonight. That is my sacred solemn promise before God Himself.”

The dog thumped his tail.

Pete Sands, walking under the moon, across the nighted plain, hiking between the tracks of the cow cart, pausing periodically to assure himself they remain: Shouldn’t be abroad after dark. Should find some sheltered place and bed down. Want more distance between me and that schizy autofac, though. Guess I’ve probably come far enough. But now I feel vulnerable, exposed. Flat, empty, this place. But there were trees in the distance when the light went away. This still seems the proper direction. That right track is getting wobbly. Without the lube, that tire could go. Is he all right? My hip is sore. Lost my hat, too. Now my head will turn red and peel. Then red again. Then peel again. It never tans over… How is Tibor faring? How strong are those manual grippers? I wonder. Could he protect himself? My knee hurts, too. There’s one problem he’ll never have. Life would be so much simpler if Lufteufel had had the decency to die back when he should have and everybody knew it. Now, though… What will I do if he really turns up? Supposing he pets dogs and gives candy to children these days? Supposing he has a wife and ten kids who love him? Supposing… Hell! Too much supposing. What would Lurine say? I don’t know what Lurine would say… Where’d that damn track go?

He squatted and searched the ground. It had become gravelly, digesting the ruts. Rising again, he shrugged and continued on. No reason to assume a sudden change of direction. Continue in a straight line for now.

He reinspected the trail periodically, but it retained a coarse, stony texture. I’ll have to search it out in the morning, he decided.

Trudging ahead, he noted a faint flickering off to his left, just becoming apparent about the edge of a cluster of stones. Moving farther, more of the light reached him, finally revealing itself as a small campfire. Only one figure was outlined in its vicinity, a being with a strangely pointed head. It was kneeling, its attention apparently focused on the flames.

Pete slowed, studying the tableau. Moments later, the breeze brought him a tangy odor and his mouth grew moist. It had been a long while since last he had eaten.

He stood but a moment longer,, then turned and made his way toward the fire, moving slowly, cautiously. As he drew nearer, he caught a glint of the light on a metal headpiece. It was a spiked helmet, of a sort he was not likely to forget too readily. Then he glimpsed the features below it. Yes, no mistake there.

He moved ahead quickly then.

“Hunter!” he said. “You are the same man. Aren’t you? Back at the Great C’s—”

The man laughed, three deep-chested explosions that shook the flames he tended.

“Yes, yes! Come and sit down! I hate to eat alone.”

Pete dropped his pack and hunkered beside it, across the fire from the man.

“I’d’ve sworn you were dead,” he said. “All that blood. You were limp. I thought it had killed you. Then when it dragged you inside… I was sure you were gone.”

The man nodded, turning the little spits of bone on which chunks of meat were skewered.

“I can see how you might have been misled,” he said. “Here!”

The man drew a kabob from the fire and passed it to him. Pete licked his fingers for insulation and accepted it. The meat was good, juicy. Pete debated asking what it was, and decided against it. A hunter can always find something edible. Best to leave it at that.

The man ate with an unnatural precision, and Pete could see the reason as he studied his face: his lower lip had been badly cut, split deeply.

“Yes,” the man muttered, “the blood could have been deceiving—part from my mouth and part from a recent head wound that reopened. That’s why I was wearing the armor.” He tapped the headpiece. “Good thing, too. Kept it from pulping my skull.”

“But how,” Pete said, “did you get away from it?”

“Oh. No real problem,” he replied. “I came out of it just as it dragged me inside. I’d already loosened the cranial bolt to the springing point. One twist was what I said and one twist was what it took. With my fingers. Presto!” He snapped his fingers. He popped another piece of meat into his mouth. “Then it was down and I was up and that was it. Pity. But then, I’d given it every break. You know that, don’t you?”

“You were most fair with it,” Pete said, finishing his kabob and eyeing the others that still sizzled.

The man passed him another.

And his hands are still steady, Pete thought, accepting the meat. All in a day’s work. Competency, expertise—nerves like fine-spun filaments of platinum, joints like neatly mashed gears and stainless-steel ball bearings. Skill, guts—that’s what it takes to be a hunter. But he’s got heart, too. Compassion. How many of us would be that concerned over something that wanted to devour us?

“After I left that place,” the hunter said, “I continued on my way, pleased to see that you had had the good sense to clear out.”

Oh my god! Pete thought. I hope he was really unconscious, not just saying that. What if he heard me asking the C to take him instead of me? But then, I really thought he was dead. I just told him so. So even if he did hear me say it, he’d know that—that was why. But I could have told him that now, just to look good, even though it wasn’t what I had in mind when I said it. On the other hand, if he heard it he must be a big enough man to have forgiven me—in which case he is pretending he didn’t hear it—which means that I will never know. Oh my god! And here I am eating his kabobs.

“What became of your bike?” the hunter asked him.

“The autofac turned it into pogo sticks,” Pete said.

The hunter smiled.

“Not surprising,” he said. “Once their naderers go, they do the damnedest things. But you were carrying something you didn’t have before. Did it actually fill an order properly before it ruined your bike?”

“Someone else’s order,” Pete said. “Its delivery sequence is off, too.”

“What are you going to do with all that lube?”

“I am taking it to a man who probably needs it,” Pete said, recalling the C’s statement that the hunter was after Tibor. Easily a piece of misinformation. Still…

He stuffed his mouth to avoid answering anything further without at least a ten-second pause for thought.

Why would he be looking for Tibor, though? he wondered. What could he want of him? What would make Tibor worth hunting? To anyone else, that is… ?

When they finished eating, Pete knew that he should offer the man one of his remaining cigarettes. He did so, and he took one for himself. They lit them with a brand from the fire and sprawled then near the boulders, resting, smoking.

“I don’t know,” Pete said, “about the propriety of the question. So please excuse me if I am being impolite. I don’t meet so many hunters that I am up on the etiquette. I was just wondering: Are you hunting anything or anyone in particular just now, or are you—between hunts?”

“Oh, I’m on a hunt all right,” the man said. “I’m looking for a little phocomelus named Tibor McMasters. I think the trail is fairly warm now, too.”

“Oh, really?” said Pete, drawing on his cigarette, one hand beneath his head, his eyes on the stars. “What did he do?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing yet. He is not especially important. Just part of a bigger design.”

“Oh.” Now what do I say? he wondered. Then, “By the way, my name is Pete. Pete Sands.”

“I know.”

“I forgot to introduce myself earlier, and—You know? How could you?”

“Because I know of everyone in Charlottesville, Utah—everyone with any connection with Tibor McMasters, that is. It’s a small town. There aren’t that many of you.”

“Efficient,” Pete said, feeling as if barbs inserted painlessly into his flesh were now being drawn. “Your employer must have gone to a lot of trouble and expense. It would have been easier to approach the man back in town.”

“But fruitless, there,” the other replied. “And the difficulty and the cost mean nothing to my employer.”

Pete waited, smoking. He felt positive that it would be a breach of etiquette to inquire as to his employer’s identity. Perhaps if I just wait he will volunteer it, he decided.

The fire crackled. In the distance, something howled and something else chuckled.

“My name is Schuld, Jack Schuld,” the hunter said, extending his hand.

Pete turned onto his side and clasped it. The grip was, as he suspected, powerful enough to crush his own, while sufficiently controlled to show this without exerting considerable force. Releasing it, Pete leaned back and contemplated stellar geometries. A meteor smeared white fire across the sky. When the stars threw down their spears, he remembered, And water’d heaven with their tears … What came next? He could not recall.

“Tibor is on a dangerous Pilg,” Schuld said, “and he has recently expressed a desire to convert to the religion wherein you would take your ministry.”

“You are indeed thorough,” Pete observed.

“Yes, I’d say so. You Christians aren’t doing so well these days,” he continued, “and even a single convert comes to mean a lot in a little place like Charlottesville, Utah. Right?”

“I can’t deny it,” Pete said.

“So your superior has sent you to take care of the catechumen, to see that he comes to no harm while finishing his job for the competition.”

“I do want to find him and protect him,” Pete said.

“And the subject of his search? Have you any curiosity concerning the one he has been commissioned to portray?”

“Oh, I sometimes wonder whether the man is still really living,” Pete said.

“Man?” Schuld said. “You can still call him that?”

“Well, unlike our competitors, I do not really see him as fitted for any larger role.”

“I was not talking theology,” Schuld said. “I was simply noting your reference to humanity when speaking of one who has forfeited all right to any human considerations. Adolph Eichmann was an altar boy by comparison. We are speaking of the beast who destroyed most of the world.”

“I cannot deny the act, but neither can I judge it. How can I know his motives, his intent?”

“Look, around you. Anytime. Anywhere. Their effects are manifest in every phase of existence now. He is, to put it bluntly and concisely, an inhuman monster.”

Pete nodded.

“Maybe,” he said. “If he truly understood the nature and quality of his actions, then I suppose he was something unspeakable at the time.”

“Try Carleton Lufteufel. It can be spoken. There is not a living creature on Earth today that has not known pain because of him. There is nothing to which he does not owe a sea of misery, a continent of despair. He has been marked from the day he made his decision.”

“I had heard that hunters were mercenaries, that they do not act out of conviction.”

“You anticipate me, Pete. I have not named him as my quarry.”

Pete chuckled. So did Schuld.

“But they are fortunate times, when desire and circumstance are conjoined,” Schuld finally said.

“Then why do you seek Tibor?” Pete asked. “I do not quite understand the connection.”

“The beast is wary,” the other replied, “but I doubt his suspicions would extend to a phocomelus.”

“I begin to see.”

“Yes. I will lead him to him. Tibor can have his likeness. I will have his flesh.”

Pete shuddered. The situation had twisted and darkened, but might, for all that, be turning to his advantage.

“Are you planning to make a quick, clean thing of it?” he asked.

“No,” Schuld replied. “I am charged to make certain that it is just the opposite. I am, you see, employed by a worldwide secret police organization which has been searching for Lufteufel for years—for just this purpose.”

“I understand,” Pete said. “I can almost wish that I did not know this. Almost…”

“I am telling you this because it will make it easier for me if one of you knows. As for Tibor, he has been a member of the Servants of Wrath, and its symbols may still have some hold over him. You, on the other hand, represent the opposing camp. Do you see what I mean?”

“You mean, will I cooperate?”

“Yes. Will you?”

“I do not think myself capable of stopping a person such as you.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“I know.” Damn it! I wish I could talk to Abernathy right now, he thought. But there is no way to get off the call. But he would not give me a real answer. I have to decide this one for myself. Tibor must not be permitted to meet Lufteufel. There ought to be a way. I will have time to find a way—and then let Schuld do the job for me. There is nothing else for me to say now, but, “All right, Jack. I’ll cooperate.”

“Good,” Schuld replied. “I knew that you would.” He felt that powerful hand clasp his shoulder for an instant. In that same instant he felt hemmed in by the stone and the stars.