by Jack Dann
The lightning had singed off part of his beard. He lifted big fingers to wipe off the wet fluffy ash, and I saw the stripe on his naked arm, on the broad back of his hand, and I made out another stripe just like it on the other. Lightning had slammed down both hands and arms, and clear down his flanks and legs—I saw the burnt lines on his fringed leggings. It was like a double lash of God's whip.
Page got off the stool and came close to him. Just then he didn't look so out-and-out much bigger than she was. She put a long gentle finger on that lightning lash where it ran along his shoulder.
"Does it hurt?" she asked. "You got some grease I could put on it?"
He lifted his head, heavy, but didn't look at her. He looked at me. "I lied to you all," he said.
"Lied to us?" I asked him.
"I did call for the rain. Called for the biggest rain I ever thought of. Didn't pure down want to kill off the folks in the Notch, but to my reckoning, if I made it rain, and saved Page up here—"
At last he looked at her, with a shamed face.
"The others would be gone and forgotten. There'd be Page and me." His dark eyes grabbed her green ones. "But I didn't rightly know how she disgusts the sight of me." His head dropped again. "I feel the nearest to nothing I ever did."
"You opened the drain-off and saved the Notch from your rain," put in Page, her voice so gentle you'd never think it. "Called down the lightning to help you."
"Called down the lightning to kill me," said Rafe. "I never reckoned it wouldn't. I wanted to die. I want to die now."
"Live," she bade him.
He got up at that, standing tall over her.
"Don't worry when folks look on you," she said, her voice still ever so gentle. "They're just wondered at you, Rafe. Folks were wondered that same way at Saint Christopher, the giant who carried Lord Jesus across the river."
"I was too proud," he mumbled in his big bull throat. "Proud of my Genesis giant blood, of being one of the sons of God—"
"Shoo, Rafe," and her voice was gentler still, "the least man in size you'd call for, when he speaks to God, he says, 'Our Father.' "
Rafe turned from her.
"You said I could look on you if I wanted," said Page Jarrett. "And I want."
Back he turned, and bent down, and she rose on her toetips so their faces came together.
The rain stopped, the way you'd think that stopped it. But they never seemed to know it, and I picked up my guitar and went out toward the lip of the cliff.
The falls were going strong, but the drain-off handled enough water so there'd be no washout to drown the folks below. I reckoned the rocks would be the outdoingist slippery rocks ever climbed down by mortal man, and it would take me a long time. Long enough, maybe so, for me to think out the right way to tell Mr. Lane Jarrett he was just before having himself a son-in-law of the Genesis giant blood, and pretty soon after while, grandchildren of the same strain.
The sun came stabbing through the clouds and flung them away in chunks to right and left, across the bright blue sky.
THE CENTAUR
Half man and half horse, the centaur is one of the few mythical creatures usually considered to be more human than beast. It's doubtful, for instance, that anyone would ask a sphinx or a griffin to tea, but centaurs, who had their own civilization and customs, were often admitted into human society. It was this, in fact, that led to their downfall. Centaurs were invited to the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia, but became drunk at the wedding feast and, in the quaint phrasing of Bulfinch's Mythology, "attempted to offer violence to the bride." This lapse in manners led to the celebrated and bloody Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs, and was one of the chief reasons why Hercules annihilated most of the centaur race a bit later on.
In spite of the rude and barbarous side of their natures, though, centaurs remain, in Jorge Luis Borges's words, "the most harmonious creatures of fantastic zoology," and the myths spend much time detailing their good traits as well. They are often portrayed as seers and sages, and the wisest of them, Chiron, was the teacher of Achilles, Aesculapius, and many of the other heroes of Greek mythology; so distinguished was he that, when he died, Zeus raised him to the heavens as the constellation
Sagittarius. Interestingly, that indefatigable encyclopedist of the ancient world, Pliny, says that he actually saw a centaur with his own eyes. It had been brought to Rome from Egypt in the reign of Claudius, embalmed in honey.
In the stories that follow, we—like Pliny—are privileged to see centaurs, too, but these centaurs—man-made and otherwise—are very much alive .. .
Karen Anderson is a writer and poet who has appeared frequently in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as in Galaxy, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and elsewhere—sometimes with solo work, sometimes writing in collaboration with her husband, writer Poul Anderson. Her work has been collected in the book
The Unicorn Trade.
Gene Wolfe is perceived by many critics to be one of the best—perhaps the best—SF and fantasy writers working today. His most acclaimed work is the tetralogy The Book of the New Sun, individual volumes of which have won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His most recent books are the novel Free Live Free and the collection The Wolfe Archipelago.
Treaty in Tartessos
by
Karen Anderson
IRATZABAL'S HOOFS WERE shod with bronze, as befitted a high chief, and heavy gold pins held the coils of bright sorrel hair on-top of his head. In this morning's battle, of course, he had used wooden pins which were less likely to slip out. As tonight was a ceremonial occasion, he wore a coat of aurochs hide dyed blue with woad, buttoned and cinched with hammered gold.
He waved his spear high to show the green branches bound to its head as he entered the human's camp. No one spoke, but a guard grunted around a mouthful of barley-cake and jerked his thumb toward the commander's tent.
Standing in his tent door, Kynthides eyed the centaur with disfavor, from his unbarbered hair to the particularly clumsy bandage on his off fetlock. He straightened self-consciously in his sea-purple cloak and pipeclayed linen tonic.
"Greetings, most noble Iratzabal," he said, bowing. "Will you enter my tent?"
The centaur returned the bow awkwardly. "Glad to, most noble Kynthides." he said. As he went in the man realized with a little surprise that the centaur emissary was only a couple of fingers' breadth taller than himself.
It was darker inside the tent than out, despite the luxury of three lamps burning at once. "I hope you've dined well? May I offer you anything?" Kynthides asked polite-
ly, with considerable misgivings. The centaur probably wouldn't know what to do with a barley loaf, and as for wine—well, there wasn't a drop within five miles of camp. Or there had better not be.
"That's decent of you, but I'm full up," said Iratzabal. "The boys found a couple of dead ... uh, buffalo, after the battle, and we had a fine barbecue."
Kynthides winced. Another yoke of draft oxen gone! Well, Corn Mother willing, the war would be settled soon, It might even be tonight. "Won't you, er ... sit? Lie down? Er, make yourself comfortable."
Iratzabal lowered himself to the ground with his feet under him, and Kynthides sank gratefully into a leather-backed chair. He had been afraid the discussion would be conducted standing up.
"I got to admit you gave us a good fight today, for all you're such lightweights," the centaur said. "You generally do. If we don't get things settled somehow, we could go on like this till we've wiped each other out."
"We realize that too," said the man. "I've been asked by the heads of every village in Tartessos, not to mention communities all the way back to Thrace, to make some reasonable settlement with you. Can you speak for centaurs in those areas?"
"More or less." He swished his tail across the bandaged fetlock, and flies scattered. "I run most of the territory from here up through Goikokoa Etchea—what men call Pyrene's Mountains—and across
to the Inland Sea. Half a dozen tribes besides mine hunt through here, but they stand aside for us. We could lick any two of them with our eyes shut. Now, you take an outfit like the Acroceraunians —I don't run them, but they've heard of me, and I can tell them to knuckle under or face my boys and yours. But that shouldn't be necessary. I'm going to get them a good cut."
"Well, remember that if the communities don't like promises I make in their names, they won't honor them," said the man. He slid his fingers through the combed curls of his dark-brown beard and wished he could ignore the centaur's odor. The fellow smelled like a saddle-blanket. If he didn't want to wash, he could at least use perfume. "First, we ought to consider the reasons for this war, and after that ways to settle the dispute."
"The way I see it," the centaur began, "is, you folks want to pin down the corners of a piece of country and sit on it. We don't understand ground belonging to somebody."
"It began," Kynthides said stiffly, "with that riot at the wedding."
"That was just what set things off," said Iratzabal. "There'd been a lot of small trouble before then. I remember how I was running down a four-pointer through an oak wood one rainy day, with my nose full of the way things smell when they're wet and my mind on haunch of venison. The next thing I knew I was in a clearing planted with one of those eating grasses, twenty pounds of mud on each hoof and a pack of tame wolves worrying my hocks. I had to kill two or three of them before I got away, and by then there were men throwing spears and shouting 'Out! Out!' in what they thought was Eskuara."
"We have to keep watchdogs and arm the field hands, or we wouldn't have a stalk of grain standing at harvest time!"
"Take it easy. I was just telling you, the war isn't over a little thing like some drunks breaking up a wedding. Nor they wouldn't have, if the wine hadn't been where they could get at it. There's blame on both sides."
The man half rose at this, but caught himself. The idea was to stop the war, not set it off afresh. "At any rate, it seems we can't get along with each other. Men and centaurs don't mix well."
"We look at things different ways, said Iratzabal. "You see a piece of open country, and all you can think of is planting a crop on it. We think of deer grazing it, or rabbit and pheasant nesting. Field-planting ruins the game in a district."
"Can't you hunt away from farm districts?" asked Kynthides. "We have our families to support, little babies and old people. There are too many of us to let the crops go and live by hunting, even if there were as much game as the land could support."
"Where can we hunt?" shrugged the centaur. "Whenever we come through one of our regular districts, we find more valleys under plow than last time, more trees cut and the fields higher up the slope. Even in Goikokoa Etchea, what's as much my tribe's home as a place can be, little fields are showing up." A swirl of lamp smoke veered toward him, and he sniffed it contemptuously. "Sheep fat! The herds I find aren't deer any more, they're sheep, with a boy pi-pipping away on a whistle—and dogs again."
"If you'd pick out your territory and stay on it, then no farmers would come in," said Kynthides. "It's contrary to our nature to leave land unused because somebody plans to hunt through it next autumn."
"But, big as Goikokoa Etchea is, it won't begin to feed us year round! We've got to have ten times as much, a hundred times if you're talking of Scythia and Illyria and all."
"I live in Thessaly myself," Kynthides pointed out. "I have to think of Illyria. What we men really want is to see all you centaurs completely out of Europe, resettled in Asia or the like. Couldn't you all move out of Sarmatia and the lands to the east? Nobody lives there. It's all empty steppes."
"Sarmatia! Maybe it looks empty to a farmer, but I've heard from the boys in Scythia. The place is filling up with Achaians, six feet tall, each with twenty horses big enough to eat either one of us for breakfast, and they can ride those horses all night and fight all day. By Jainco, I'm keeping away from them."
"Well, there's hardly anybody in Africa. Why don't you go there?" the man suggested.
"If there was any way of us all getting there—" "Certainly there is! We have ships. It would take a couple of years to send you all, but—"
"If we could get there, we wouldn't like it at all. That's no kind of country for a centaur. Hot, dry, game few and far between—no thanks. But you're willing to ship us all to some other place?"
"Any place! That is, within reason. Name it."
"Just before war broke out in earnest, I got chummy with a lad who'd been on one of those exploring voyages you folks go in for. He said he'd been to a place that was full of game of all kinds, and even had the right kind of toadstools."
"Toadstools? To make poison with?" cried Kynthides, his hand twitching toward the neatly bandaged spear-jab on his side.
"Poison!" Iratzabal ducked his head and laughed into his heavy sorrel beard. "That's a good one, poison from toadstools! No, to eat. Get a glow on at the Moon Dances—same way you people do with wine. Though I can't see why you use stuff that leaves you so sick the next day."
"Once you've learned your capacity, you needn't have a hangover," Kynthides said with a feeling of superiority. "But this place you're talking of—"
"Well, my pal said it wasn't much use to men, but centaurs would like it. Lots of mountains, all full of litle tilted meadows, but no flat country to speak of. Not good to plow up and sow with barley or what-not. Why not turn that over to us, since you can't send any big colonies there anyway?"
"Wait a minute. Are you talking about Kypros' last expedition?"
"That's the one my pal sailed under," nodded Iratzabal.
"No, by the Corn Mother! How can I turn that place over to you? We've barely had a look at it ourselves. There may be tin and amber to rival Thule, or pearls, or sea-purple. We have simply no idea of what we'd be giving you."
"And there may be no riches at all. Did this guy Kypros say he'd seen any tin or pearls? If he did, he didn't tell a soul of his crew. And I'm telling you, if we don't go there we don't go anyplace. I can start the war again with two words."
The man sprang to his feet, white-lipped. "Then start the war again! We may not have been winning, but by the Mother, we weren't losing!"
Iratzabal heaved himself upright. "You can hold out as long as we give you pitched battles. But wait till we turn to raiding! You'll have fields trampled every night, and snipers chipping at you every day. You won't dare go within bowshot of the woods. We'll chivy your herds through your crops till they've run all their fat off and there's not a blade still standing. And you'll get no harvest in, above what you grab off the stem and eat running. How are the granaries, Kynthides? Will there be any seed corn left by spring?"
The man dropped into his chair and took his head in trembling hands. "You've got us where we hurt. We can't survive that kind of warfare. But how can I promise land that isn't mine? It belongs to Kypros' backers, if anyone."
"Pay them off in the grain that won't be spoiled. Fix up the details any way it suits you. I'm not trying to make it hard on you—we can kick through with a reasonable number of pelts and such to even the bargain."
He looked up. "All right, Iratzabal," he said wearily. "You can have Atlantis."
The Woman Who Loved
The Centaur Pholus
by
Gene Wolfe
ANDERSON'S TELEPHONE RANG, and of course it was Janet. Anderson swung his feet over the side of the bed before he hung up, then looked at his watch. Four twenty A.M. The moonlight on the melting snow outside sent a counterfeit dawn to his windows.
He switched on the reading light and found his slippers, then kicked them off again. There would not be time for slippers. The little water-horse that Dumont—Dumont would surely be there too—had made for him lifted its head and foaming mane above the rim of its aquarium and neighed, a sound so high pitched it might have been the chirping of a bird.
So like they were, no mortal
Might one from the other know; White as snow their armor
was,
Their steeds were white as snow. Never on earthly anvil
Did such rare armor gleam,
And never did such gallant steeds
Drink from an earthly stream.
Who had written that? Anderson couldn't remember. Before he had gone to bed he had filled the stainless- steel thermos with scalding coffee, telling himself he would not need it, that he would drink it with breakfast so as not to waste it. Wool shirt with lumberjack checks, wool hunting pants, thick socks, rubber-bottomed hunting boots, down-filled vest, parka, Navy watch cap. Gloves and compass in the parka's pockets? Yes. His sign was already in the car, and the chains were on. It started without trouble; he roared out of the driveway and down the silent street. Coming, Janet. Coming, Pholus, or whoever you are. Damn.
When winter was beginning, he had gone out in the suit he wore on campus, with the same overcoat and hat. He had learned better, floundering through the snow long before machinegun slugs had ripped the weak and frightened siren, the bird-woman whose scattered feathers he had helped Dumont gather when the soldiers were gone. There was a mail-order company that sold all sorts of cold-weather gear. Their prices were high, but the quality was excellent. Never on earthly anvil ... How did the rest go? Something, something, something ..
O'er the green waves which gently bend and swell, Fair Amphitrite steers her silver shell;
Her playful dolphins stretch the silken rein, Hear her sweet voice, and glide along the main.
No, that wasn't it, that was Darwin, the father (or was it the grandfather?) of Dumont's Darwin, the Darwin of the Beagle. Anderson swung onto the Interstate. For mile after mile, the red taillights of the cars in front of him looked like the red eyes of beasts, prowling the snow by night.
