Masters of Everon

by Gordon R. Dickson

  To Jef, the feeling was like riding a roller coaster. He felt himself swoop down into a viewpoint that showed him, from a body-length away, the side view of a majestic, mature maolot female, gazing out impassively between two tall boulders. The image was faintly distorted, as if he looked through the multifaceted eyes of some insect. There was a moment of watching, then another swoop to a new point of view; and now he was looking at one more of the massive watchers, a male lying with paws together and head up, gaze fixed on the distant grassland beneath the sunset area of the sky. This watcher turned his head, as though aware of being observed, until he faced whatever point of view Mikey was using to watch him. But as he did, his eyes closed, so that when Jef became able to look directly at them, they were as blind-appearing as Mikey's.

  Jef felt chilled. Clearly, the impression came to him, the large male knew Jef was looking at him; and, equally clearly, he had deliberately closed his eyes to keep Jef from seeing them. There was distancing in that action, a shutting-out. Jef found himself feeling more lonely than he had thought it possible to feel.

  Another swoop, and Jef was looking at another large female. Then another male, and another mature female. Mikey moved Jef's point of view along the cliff top, stopping at each of the silent sentinels. Some of these ignored the observation that was being made of them, some turned to look; but all who looked closed their eyes before Jef could see into them.

  At last Mikey returned their point of view to his own body behind the divided spire and his mind released Jef's point of view. Jef sat back against the face of rock that supported him, dazed. Once—it seemed like months ago, now—he had thought that it was probably as well Jarji had not been able to supply him with a crossbow; because, inexperienced as he was with such a weapon and powerful as a full-grown maolot must be, he would probably only anger such a creature by trying to defend himself with it. He had been thinking then only of the physical size and power of the adult. Now he faced the fact that if one of these he watched had stepped out then from between the trees of the forest through which he had been traveling, and done no more than look at him with closed eyes, he would still have been as helpless as a small bird charmed by a snake.

  Slowly the emotional effect of what he had just seen receded.

  Look, Mikey told him. Now they come.

  He turned to stare out over the forest and the grassland. The sun was just winking below the horizon; and, as he watched, it went. Now that it was gone he was able to see other little winks of light, several hundred feet above the grasslands and approaching. As these grew closer, he saw they were the last of the last daylight, caught by planes high enough in the air to still be able to do so, and reflected off the shinier underparts of their wings and bodies.

  There were four of them. They came in, circled, and went down, one by one, to land in the clearing where the single human and his craft already waited. After gazing at the still-bright sky, the shadow in the clearing below seemed night-dark to Jef. But plainly there was enough light for craft to land safely. As Jef continued to watch, his eyes adjusted to the dimmer scene and he saw them all settle in the clearing. There were figures moving around them on the ground; but it was now literally too dim to make out any details. Without warning, the dazzle of a guide beam for an industrial laser flickered into life at the edge of the clearing, and one of the tall, dark fingers that were the elmlike native trees, began to lean, further and faster as it went, until it came crashing to the ground.

  It's begun, Mikey informed Jef; and Jef had a sudden image of the trees and bushes all cut down and the new open ground sown with fertilizer. By dawn the low moss-grass in the cleared area would begin putting up microscopic stems. In a week the grass here would be almost as tall as that full grown in the rest of the grasslands and humans like himself would hardly be able to tell where forest had used to be.

  Jef stared as more dazzles of lights appeared and other trees began to fall.

  Now the older ones go, Mikey said.

  Startled, Jef looked down at the clifftop. It had become too dim, even up here, to see the shapes of the adult maolots; but through Mikey Jef felt that they had indeed gone.

  "Where?" Jef asked.

  Mikey showed him.

  Jef found himself loping through the night forest. The men with the industrial lasers were close, but the adult whose point of view he was now inhabiting mentally paid no attention to them. Ahead was the edge of the grassland. A moment later and he was plunging through the grass with the same gait but much faster than Mikey had traveled in bringing Jef to the cliff.

  The grassland was dark. The cloudless sky overhead was a darkness in which only a few first points of stars shone. There was nothing to be seen; but the maolot which was Jef could feel his fellows spread out in a skirmish line five hundred meters wide, sweeping out into the grasslands at a steady pace of better than fifty kilometers an hour.

  Come, Mikey told Jef. We need to get started too, so we can meet them afterwards.

  "Afterwards—what?" Jef asked, as he remounted Mikey.

  Afterwards, said Mikey. Jef would see.

  With Jef on his back, Mikey began to move once more along the line of the rocky ridge. It ran for several kilometers before it either lowered to a level with the surrounding land, or the land rose to join it. At first it was dark going, but then a moon rose. Its rising was seen first by the adults out in the sea of grass some moments before Mikey and Jef could see it. Above the waving grass-tops it produced as spectacular a picture as had the daybreak Jef had seen. Only this was a picture painted all in silvers and greys and blacks. Seeing it through the mind of Mikey to the mind of the particular maolot with which he was in direct contact, Jef found himself caught up in the identity of the older alien—to the point where his ride on Mikey became the dream and his sensations of coursing through the tall grass on his own four legs, the reality. He snorted the night air deep into his enormous lungs. The moonlight intoxicated him. His feet seemed to barely touch the earth at the end and beginning of each leap, and his limbs felt as if they could keep carrying him so forever. With ten-meter strides he spurned the planet beneath him, sending it spinning with his pads. Ahead were those he sought.

  Ahead, Jef became aware, was a darker line against the moonlit grass. It was a darkness that grew until it became recognizable as a mass of animals—a mass of wisents. It was a herd of three thousand of the Earth variform animals, his maolot knew, feeding and jostling each other, with females and young in toward the center of the herd, males toward the outside, their eyes watching, their horns ready, an uneasiness in their dim minds making them alert for possible attack. Not an attack from maolots, but from bulky, oiled-metal things that patrolled around them, keeping them in one tight herd. Riding wisents, the herd animals were used to— though these faster-legged, lighter-weight, close cousins, genetically tailored to be a riding animal for the Everon settlers, were regarded as an enemy tribe by the herd beasts and attacked whenever they could be cornered. Aircraft overhead, they were also used to. But never in their lives had any of them seen one of Everon's few, valuable prototype trucks with their noisy and smelling internal combustion engines, and these filled them with uneasy fears.

  The adults were close now. They were no longer bounding forward, but sneaking through the grass below its feathery surface. The adult that Jef's mind rode with was now circling the circling trucks, passing close enough to the men in the bed of one truck, sitting around the industrial laser mounted there on a swivel base like a heavy duty military rifle, so that their talk could be plainly heard. Heard, and by Jef, understood.

  "... how the hell much longer?"

  "Four hours, radio says."

  "Four hours, and then four hours to make the drive in. Why we got to lie this far out? No sense..."

  "... the maolots."

  "Hell, we cut one in half, he shows up. Four hour drive! We could lay one hour out and have the trees down and the herd in by midnight."

  "Wait'll you made more'n one
of these drives. Maolots are smart."

  "What good's smart against an industrial laser? Ten script against the first one I see getting away."

  "That's no bet. You see one, of course it's not getting away."

  "Put or shut..."

  "Besides, the satellite pictures don't have to show wisents already on the land. Just helps in court, if they do."

  "Sure, tell us, Holbert. How many thousand head do you own? How many new patches you open up before now?"

  —Somewhere, on the far side of the herd, the deep, carrying call of an adult male maolot droned in the night.

  The wisent grunted and milled. In a couple of seconds the outer ring was solidly composed of bulls, their horns lowered. Their unease over the unknown trucks was drowned now in their certain awareness of the maolots.

  Searchlights were on in each of the vehicles. Bright beams were sweeping the grasstop. Voices were calling and speaking by intercom from truck to truck.

  "What do you see?"

  "Damnall, that's what I see. What do you see?"

  "There's only one of them."

  "How come you're so smart, Harlie?"

  "Get that light over here! I thought I saw something—"

  "Use your own light!"

  "—Damn, he was moving too fast..."

  Slowly, gradually the talk lowered in pitch and became less excited. The wisent calmed.

  From another quarter a mature male sounded not a full roar, but a droning, hunting call.

  Alarm rose again. The wisents stamped and tried to gather into an even tighter bunch. The trucks put on speed, waving the beams of their searchlights around energetically. Slowly, much more slowly this time, things calmed once more in the silence of the night.

  "What the hell, Harlie, one maolot's not going to attack five trucks—"

  A drone sounded beyond the side of the herd that faced the recently risen moon. Another answered almost immediately from the other side of the herd.

  "There's two of them! I told you, I told you there was more than just one—"

  "Shut up! Listen!"

  A series of uneasy waves of movement, like waves in the ocean from some underwater disturbance, were rippling through the close-packed wisents. Individual animals in the herd were trying to turn from one threat to face horns-out at another, and finding the herd so tightly pushed together that turning was impossible. Instinct to face danger, head down, warred with instinct to huddle together as tightly as possible.

  "—Do something!" a voice from one truck was shouting. "Those maolots keep getting this herd worked up and half of them'll run themselves to death when we finally start moving them into the new patch! Harlie! Ty! Your two trucks break circle! See if you can run those bastards down!"

  Two of the circling trucks—one on each side of the herd-turned out from their patrol route and began to swing back and forth in figure eights outside the circle the other trucks were making around the herd. Within the identity of his maolot, crouched now in the grass with heavy jaws open as if laughing while he watched, Jef felt triumph.

  "Nothing!" one of the men in the closest truck was reporting by intercom to whoever had ordered the trucks out.

  "Keep looking!" The radio voice over the intercom could be heard answering.

  "Maybe we scared them off."

  "You scared them off all right—like hell you did!"

  The man in the nearest truck grumbled something Jef's maolot could not hear well enough for Jef to translate. But the truck kept moving.

  A full chorus of maolot voices rang out, one after the other, so fast that the two outside cars gave up their figure eights automatically and simply cruised parallel to the circle the interior trucks were still making.

  "That does it!" came the radio voice from the intercom. "Harlie, Ty, back to position. I don't give a damn whether they've got that patch cleared yet or not. I'm not losing money for half of this bunch dead on the way in. We're moving them now; and once we get the wiz there, they're not our responsibility anymore! Back to station, all trucks! Move them out—and keep your eyes open. Those cats may sing, but they're not going to show themselves when someone's awake on a laser. Keep your heads together and we'll get them all in safe—and us home by dawn!"

  One truck moved directly into the wisents, and the others drew back. The herd began to move, at first almost grudgingly, but then rapidly speeding up to the trot which was a pace these animals could keep up day and night, if necessary. The trucks herded them, one before and one ahead, one on each side of the moving herd. Outside the protection of the trucks, the maolots also paced the traveling beasts, but without sound and without moving in on them.

  Jef, lost completely in the identity of the maolot through whose eyes he was seeing this, felt frustration. The herd was traveling now, and there was no way the maolots could get at it, with the trucks between them and the shaggy herbivores. It was true enough that any one of the maolots could have made a quick dash into the dark mass of trotting animals and killed right and left before the gunners on any of the trucks could have laid their sights on him. But such a maolot would never have gotten back out of the herd alive.

  Clearly, the adults, fierce and strong as they were, had too much intelligence to throw away even one of their own lives just to do token damage to the herd. Though short of such a sacrifice, Jef did not see now how they would have any real chance of interfering with the drive.

  Then he became aware of an effort that his identity-maolot was making. It was a strange sort of effort because it was neither physical, mental, nor emotional. It was something deeper and older than such things and all the maolots following the herd were making it at once.

  It was an effort that reached out to encompass, to touch everything. All things moved to it. The earth breathed, a billion microscopic things broke free to wander, the night winds patterned, and overall concentration wove this into a movement and a happening. It was part of blood and bone and soil and seed and air. It was like a great, silent medicine song in which the singer was the music and the music was everything.

  The moonlight dimmed slightly. Jef's maolot glanced up and saw a thin veil blurring the light of the single, visible moon. About the trotting herd the grassland was not as clearly to be seen as before. The air was cooler now, with a slightly damp chill.

  Something in Jef exulted. It was reaching him through Mikey and through his identity-maolot, but it was originating in him, also. It was a glory—the glory of what was right—the glory of feeling, of knowing and doing. It was as it always had been, always must be, and always would be until the final death. His head swam with feelings so strong it blurred his vision.

  The wisent were trotting a little faster now, snorting uneasily. There were the beginnings of fear in them, but also being variforms, they were touched themselves by what was happening, what Jef was feeling. Only the men on the trucks did not feel it.

  Their voices were low but steady in their talking. Jef's identity-maolot glanced upward again. The moon was almost invisible now—a cloudy blur of light, no more, and the grassland was becoming murky and dark, with little tendrils of mist clinging to the tops of the grass stems.

  One of the other maolots sounded.

  Another answered.

  The searchlights flared out in all directions, but the mist baffled and broke their beams. The wisent coughed and trotted faster. There was a hint of panic in their going.

  The maolot calls sounded again.

  The herd's trotting broke at last into the beginnings of a run.

  The mist thickened. Now the men on a truck at one side of the herd could not make out the truck on the other side of the herd. The truck leading could see none of the trucks behind it. The rearguard truck saw only wisents close before it.

  Human voices were making themselves heard, but the sense of their words was lost in the increasing noise the panicking herd was making. Searchlights stabbed out and blunted themselves on the thickening mist, worse than useless beyond a few meters because
the light from them spread in the hanging water droplets and blinded the men operating them. The wisent were now in a headlong run and the bass dronings of the maolot voices were sounding in the obscurity right alongside the trucks and among the fleeing herbivores.

  Lasers crackled blindly and wildly in the darkness, finding no maolots. Men on the trucks were yelling at each other now, finally infected by the thick aura of fear rising from the terrified wisents.

  The maolots sounded all together—and suddenly the attack was on. The maolot that was both himself and Jef came out of the mist like a silent thunderbolt, up and over the rear gate of one of the trucks. The men around the mounted laser saw a carnivore the size of a small horse climbing in among them, and fell over backward in a scramble to escape. The maolot landed in the center of the truck bed. One massive paw slapped down on the laser and beat it from its mount, smashing stock and mechanism—and the maolot leaped over the farther side of the truck in the same instant, landing among the herd.

  Through the herd he ran, slapping right and left at the necks of the wisents as he passed. Each slap sent a wisent bowling with a broken neck. So he raged on, as around him the other adults were also raging, killing as they went until they had beaten their way through and over the mass of bodies, blindly struggling to escape.

  Abruptly the maolots were on the other side of the herd and their job was done. The trucks were headed in all directions, the drivers now as panic-stricken as the wisents had been. The herd was a herd no longer. Instead it was innumerable tenor-ridden animals scattering out from the point of their terror, ready to run until they dropped and not to be gathered together again, even with trucks, in under a matter of days.

  The mist was dissipating. It cleared and the moonlight came clearly to illuminate the scene again, picking out a few—surprisingly few for all that wild panic—motionless dark shapes that were the bodies of slain wisent. The small number that lay dead would be written off without thought by the owner of this particular herd. Not so easy to write off, however, Jef understood suddenly through Mikey, would be the surviving beasts, whom no combination of drovers would soon be able to drive again in a northerly direction toward the newly cleared patch of forest. If the new patch of cleared land was to be populated with grazing wisents to prove the herd owners' need for it, new stock that had not lived through this night with the maolots must be gathered from much further south and a new drive begun. And by that time the satellite passing daily over this part of Everon would have recorded on its cameras a newly cleared area that had gone untenanted for several weeks.