Jungle Of Steel And Stone

by George C. Chesbro

  What Veil sees startles him, and truly frightens him for the first time. A flying machine that is not an airplane, one which he has seen before only in the desert, suddenly comes scudding low, like a giant insect, across the trees at the southern end of the meadow before him. He has seen how these flying machines can soar and sweep and even hover in the air for a long period of time. He had always assumed that these magic machines were used by the white tribes only to drop bundles of food to the K'ung in times of need, but now one of them is searching for him, lighting the ground with its fire-eyes.

  The Newyorkcity hunters have very powerful magic, Veil thinks, and it occurs to him that they may be able to find him, no matter where, or how well, he hides. If that is the case, he wants to die fighting as a warrior, not like some wounded animal cowering at the back of a cave.

  He starts to pull himself up through the cleft, then remembers with a sharp jolt that he is under the Nal-toon's protection. He has been a fool, Veil thinks, for the Nal-toon has given these things to the Newyorkcities, just as He gave the desert, and everything in it, to the K'ung. The Nal-toon sees and controls everything, and there would be no point to this trial if the Newyorkcities' magic machines and weapons were all-powerful. No. He will be safe for as long as he displays courage and keeps faith in the Nal-toon.

  Veil eases himself down into the darkness beneath the overhang. He touches the face of the Nal-toon and immediately feels better.

  When he again peers over the lip of the ledge, Veil can see that the first flying machine has been joined by a second. Both are hovering, lighting the meadow around the water. Newyorkcity warriors, all wearing identical blue clothes, swarm over the meadow and through the trees where he had been only a short time before. All of the warriors carry what appear to be bang-sticks of different sizes.

  He has killed one of their tribesmen, Veil thinks, and the Newyorkcity warriors will surely kill him if he is caught. He will have failed the trial set by the Nal-toon, and the Nal-toon will never be returned to his people.

  However, Veil thinks, the fact that the warriors are so earnestly searching for him seems to mean, as he'd suspected, that their magic is not all-powerful. He decides it is a very good sign.

  He quickly ducks when he hears footsteps clatter on the rocks near him. Gathering the Nal-toon and spear against his chest, Veil presses back beneath the overhang as a cone of light flashes down through the narrow opening and sweeps the sandy area where he had been a moment before. Then the light goes out and the sound of shoes on stone moves away.

  Veil sighs with relief, then rolls over on his right side in an effort to ease the pain in his left shoulder. He knows that the bang-stick has left its small, hurting spear deep in the muscle; he can feel it there, grinding against the bone every time he moves. He knows he must take it out, for the slightest movement of his arm sends jagged flashes of pain down through the muscles to his fingertips. He can only hope that the bang-stick spear is not poisoned. However, poisoned or not, he cannot attempt to remove the spear before morning; he needs a fire, and a night-fire would be certain to attract the Newyorkcity warriors.

  He wishes he had more shilluk to ease his pain, but he does not; he consumed all of it during his terrifying journey on the airplane.

  But the Nal-toon is with him, Veil thinks as he gently strokes God's wooden surface, and that is enough for any K'ung warrior. The Nal-toon's face conjures up images of the desert. Home. He will survive this great trial with the Nal-toon's help—and, indeed, that help is already apparent, for God has made Himself noticeably easier to carry. When he returns with the Nal-toon to his people, things will be as they were before; there will be joy, laughter, and dancing in the camp, and for the rest of his life the Nal-toon will look upon him with special favor.

  Veil's pain begins to ease as he continues to stroke the Nal-toon's rough surface. Finally he rests his head on God, closes his eyes, and drifts off to sleep within sleep.

  * * *

  Still imagining himself as Toby, Veil dreams he awakens to find himself sick to his stomach and feverish. The pain in his left shoulder has become a constant, searing ball of agony that sends flickering tongues of flame out into his neck, down through his arm, and into his fingers.

  He is being poisoned by the bang-stick spear. The spear must be cut out.

  The thought of cutting into his own flesh without the numbing embrace of shilluk fills him with a cold fear, but he knows that he must begin immediately; if he waits any longer, he will soon be too weak to make the effort.

  He picks up a dry stick and clenches it between his teeth to keep from crying out as he drags himself from beneath the ledge and struggles to his feet; thunderbolts of pain crash through his arm.

  "Nal-toon, help me," Veil whispers around the stick in his teeth. "Make me strong; make this warrior worthy of you."

  Using his right arm, Veil pulls himself up to the lip of the overhang. He peers out over the rock formation—and freezes. His sanctuary is surrounded by Newyorkcities. There are runners dressed in strange, brightly colored clothes loping along the stone paths; other Newyorkcities throw discs that float in arcs through the air; women push babies in machines that roll along the ground like Land-Rovers but are silent.

  Newyorkcity warriors in blue clothes walk in pairs. Their eyes are searching, and they occasionally touch the bang-sticks they carry in hiding pouches at their sides.

  Struggling against the draining effects of his fever, Veil lets himself back down, then lies under the ledge and waits until nightfall, when he can no longer hear the Newyorkcities in Centralpark laughing and shouting as they carry on their frenzied, apparently meaningless, activities. As the moon rises, Veil once again drags himself out from beneath the ledge onto the narrow strip of sand. He drags the Nal-toon after him.

  Despite the great risk of attracting enemy warriors, Veil knows that he must build a fire. He uses a piece of flint from the small medicine pouch he wears around his neck to fire sparks into a pile of dry leaves and twigs he has swept up from the sand and placed against a vertical face of the rock. The leaves catch first, and Veil carefully feeds the delicate wisps of flame with increasingly larger sticks and clumps of dried brush, which he pulls from cracks in the rock.

  When he is satisfied with the fire's heat, he grasps the shaft of his spear and places the long, iron head into the heart of the flames. Then he strips the clothes from the upper part of his body.

  He is ready.

  Gripping the spear's shaft just behind the head, Veil fixes his gaze on the face of the Nal-toon. In the flickering firelight, magnified by the fever-heat in Veil's brain, the gnarled face of God seems very much alive to him; God is breathing, gazing back kindly at His worshiper. Veil opens his eyes wide and continues to gaze into the carved eyeholes of the Nal-toon. Then he begins to take a series of deep, measured breaths until he feels a kind of misty, numbing warmth seeping into his mind and muscles. When he looks back into the fire, he imagines that he can see the desert in all its countless, shifting guises; when he glances back at God, the images of home continue to dance on the Nal-toon's face.

  He slowly withdraws the iron spearhead from the fire, then holds it aloft for a few moments to allow it to cool. Then, still breathing deeply and clinging to the desert-images in his mind, Veil begins to probe the wound in his shoulder with the needle-sharp point of the spear.

  Huge drops of sweat pop from his skin, glisten in the firelight, then roll off his flesh, to be sucked up by the sand. Sweat forms a stinging film over his eyes as Veil struggles to maintain the desert-images, his only shilluk, before him.

  Then the small metal bang-stick spear is out. Veil reels from pain, but he knows that there is still one thing left he must do. He shoves the spearhead back into the flames and slowly counts to ten. Then, in one swift motion, he withdraws the iron and slaps its face against the torn, bleeding flesh of his left shoulder. There is a sharp hiss, accompanied by the sweetish smell of burning flesh.

  The desert-image
s explode in a kaleidoscope of color and distant, wailing sound as Veil faints.

  * * *

  Veil's dream-body, his Toby, awakens to the feel of a cold rain falling on his face and an animal sniffing at his left ear. His instincts, born of survival in a narrow twilight zone separating life from death in the desert, tell him to remain still.

  He parts his lips slightly to let raindrops fall on his parched and swollen tongue, but even this small movement brings a menacing growl from whatever animal crouches to his left, just beyond his field of vision. It does not sound like a leopard, Veil thinks, and a lone baboon or jackal would not come this close to a breathing man. It could be a Newyorkcity camp dog, but it sounds larger.

  Still sniffing and growling, the animal moves forward until Veil can see it; it is a dog, but unlike any he had ever seen before. This animal is all black. Muscles ripple beneath its sleek, glistening hide, and its bare fangs are white and unchipped. The dog's tail appears to have been torn off in a fight, for it is no more than a lump on the animal's hindquarters.

  Breathing evenly and staring directly into the dog's eyes, Veil gropes with his right hand for his spear. Suddenly the black dog snaps at his face, and Veil moves his head aside just in time to avoid the animal's sharp fangs. At the same moment his fingers touch the shaft of his spear. He grips the shaft and rolls hard to his left, lunging directly at the startled animal and driving the spearhead deep into its throat.

  The dog coughs a thick spray of blood and saliva, then shudders and collapses without a sound across Veil's chest. Veil immediately presses his mouth to the animal's throat and drinks the nourishing blood that pulses from the severed jugular. The blood hits Veil's stomach with the force of a physical blow; its effects spread quickly throughout his body, warming him and lending him strength. He is still drinking in great, deep gulps when the animal's heart finally stops beating.

  The Nal-toon is merciful, Veil thinks; evidently satisfied with the courage he has displayed up to this point, God has provided him with the food he needs to go on.

  His strength replenished, Veil carefully wraps the Nal-toon in a piece of clothes, then places God under the overhang, out of the rain. He drags the dog's carcass under the ledge, then meticulously smooths out all signs of struggle and death from the sand. He builds a small fire, then dresses the cauterized wound in his left shoulder with herbs from his medicine pouch and strips of clothes.

  Reasonably free of pain, with his belly full and his mind in peaceful communion with God, Veil once again lies down and drifts off to sleep within sleep.

  In Veil's dream, his Toby has lost track of the time that has passed since he found sanctuary in Centralpark, but the wound in his shoulder is now almost completely healed. Also, there has been such an abundance of food in this jungle that his normally lean body has begun to show traces of fat.

  While the first dog had been delivered to him by the Nal-toon, he has had to stalk the others he has eaten. The water in the large pool nearby is not as sweet as that in the desert, but Veil has never seen water in such quantity; here it is not necessary to quickly scoop it up and store it in eggs before it seeps into the ground. He has been free to drink his fill each night, and this has made the long, hot, and waterless days spent hiding under the ledge easily bearable.

  Now he feels strong and rested, and he knows that it is time to begin his journey to the vast, smooth, stone fields where the airplanes stay. There, he thinks, the airplane that brought him to Newyorkcity will be waiting to take him home. The Nal-toon will make sure that it is so.

  Veil made no attempt to remember the many bends and sharp turns in the streets Reyna used to bring him from the airplane fields to the Nal-toon; there had been no need, for Veil does not travel on streets. He had carefully noted the position of the setting sun—first at the airplane field and again at the place where he had found the Nal-toon. The two sightings are all he needs, and he knows the precise direction in which he must travel to reach the airplane fields. The sun, and the stars at night, will guide him there.

  It is night now, and the full moon is partially obscured by clouds. With Centralpark free of Newyorkcities, he goes to the pool to drink and wash himself. Once again, as on other still nights, he hears the roar and cough of great hunting cats; the sounds seem close, to the east. Veil has become increasingly puzzled by the sounds, for they would seem to indicate that there are hunting cats in Newyorkcity, yet he has never found any spoor.

  The clothes given to him by the missionaries have become shredded and filthy, an affront to his senses. He removes them, washes them as best he can, and, from the strips, fashions a loincloth, a cloak to ward off the night chill, and a carrying sling.

  He walks to the crest of a hill and takes his bearings, using a tall building in the distance as his first landmark. He carries enough strips of dried dog meat in his sling to last many days; he wishes he had an egg in which to carry water but he does not, and he does not dwell on the problem. Water seems to be plentiful in Newyorkcity.

  Drenched in moonlight, Veil stands perfectly still for a few minutes, closing his eyes as he offers thanks to the Nal-toon and prays for a safe journey home so that his people may survive. Then he hitches his sling with its precious contents over his shoulder, grips his spear in his right hand, and starts down the hill.

  He retraces his original route, skirting the large, open meadow by moving, as silently as his moon-shadow, through the encircling trees. Finally he comes to a wide, stone path which he must cross. He crouches, listening, but can hear nothing but the intermittent whine of cars on the street a hundred or so running-steps to his right. He straightens up and steps out onto the stone path.

  Suddenly two Newyorkcities leap out from behind a tree.

  "Hold it, turkey!"

  Veil stops and assumes a fighting stance. He knows that he cannot hope to escape with the Nal-toon in the sling weighing him down, and so he will have to fight. He waits calmly, body half turned and spear arm cocked, as the warriors approach. Veil is relieved to see that the men carry only knives and not bang-sticks.

  "Hey, Mason.' Will you look at this turkey? He's gotta be stone crazy."

  "Fuckin loony, all right."

  The taller of the two men approaches, waving his knife back and forth in front of his body, then stops a few paces away from Veil. "What's in the sack, man?"

  Veil cannot understand the warrior's words, but their threatening tone is unmistakable. He considers his options, then decides that it would be better not to battle the two Newyorkcities if there is any way to avoid it. To fight, he must set down the Nal-toon, and he does not wish to do this. Also, a wound—even if not fatal—could force him to go to ground again in Centralpark, perhaps for many more days. He wants to go home. Courage, he thinks, must always be tempered by wisdom.

  "Let me pass," Veil says evenly, using his free hand to make the sign of truce used by both K'ung and Bantu.

  The short man frowns. "Christ, Blade, you ever hear anyone talk like that?"

  The other man shakes his head. "I ain't sure it's real talk at all. I think he's just makin' crazy noises."

  "Hand over the sack, man!"

  "Hey, watch out for that pig-sticker he's got."

  "Shit. I'm gonna hang that spear on my wall. You circle around on his ass. First one with an open shot cuts out the fucker's heart."

  Veil shifts his weight to his opposite foot and hefts his spear as the short man begins circling to his left. The Newyorkcities are leaving him no choice, he thinks. Their intentions are clear, and he wastes no further time in waiting. Suddenly he leaps forward, thrusting the spearhead through the taller man's throat.

  Anticipating a knife thrust from his left flank, Veil spins away from the expected direction of attack, freeing the spearhead from the dead man's neck with a flick of his wrist. He ends in a crouch, weight slightly forward on the balls of his feet, spear held ready to impale the other attacker.

  But the second man makes no move of any kind. He stands ver
y still, hands shaking at his sides as he stares in horror at the nearly decapitated body spouting blood over the stone path.

  "Shit, man, you killed him! You killed Mason!"

  Veil takes two running-steps and thrusts with his spear. The man screeches and tries to twist away, but the spearhead slices into his shoulder. Veil pulls back the spear, and the man slumps to the ground. Veil leaps into position to make a kill-thrust, but the pitiful helplessness and strange behavior of the man cowering on the stone path makes him hesitate.

  The Newyorkcity warrior is crying. His face is wet with tears.

  "Holy shit. You gonna kill me too? Don't kill me, man. I'm really sorry."

  At first Veil is confused by the tears in the man's eyes, then he is disgusted; never before has he seen a warrior weep. "I will not kill you," Veil says contemptuously as he picks up the knife the man has dropped and puts it into his sling. "Give thanks to the Nal-toon."

  Immediately dismissing the battle with the two Newyorkcities from his mind, Veil moves across the stone path and into a thin line of trees. There he crouches and peers over the top of the stone wall that separates Centralpark from the rest of Newyorkcity. The street, filled with cars when he first ran across it, is now almost empty.

  Veil climbs over the wall and races across the street to a dark area between two buildings. He presses back against one of the buildings and waits, watching and listening. There are no shouts or wailing sounds, no sign that anyone has seen him.

  He goes on, sprinting from one shadow-area to another, until he eventually finds his way blocked by a building unlike any he has seen before. It is not as tall as many of the others he has passed, but it sprawls for a considerable distance to both the north and south, blocking his path. Newyorkcities in white clothes go in and out of its many openings.