by Robert Adams
“Frankly, I have long thought that that was what happened, but I have tried hard to delude myself into the thought that it was not that way. It was easier thinking, you see, Tovarich Milo, for my dear wife, some of our children and most of our grandchildren live … lived nearby to the port. I suppose that I am alone, completely alone, now. Since it is so, then I just must make my family those brave mariners and fishermen who depend upon me.”
“That’s the best thing you can do, under the harsh, bitter circumstances, my friend Vasili,” Milo assured the suffering man. “It clearly demonstrates to all the great strength of your character, your self-discipline, your dedication to the welfare of your subordinates. You’re one hell of a lot like me. If only I could’ve met you sometime …”
“Tovarich, I still could bring a trawler for you. Give me the name of a nonradioactive port and I will quickly plot a course and tell you when you must be there.” The Russian’s invitation bore the undertones of a plea.
“No, Vasili,” replied Milo. “No, you—any men like you—are surely needed desperately in your motherland, just now. You must return to help those who have survived everything so far to survive the coming winter. Coming here to fetch me would likely add weeks to your journey home, and those weeks could cost lives, many lives. I could not be happy with those lives on my conscience. Besides, I must soon see what I can do about succoring some of my own people, I suppose.”
Milo never again was able to communicate with those Russians or any other, unless the broadcasts he monitored from Erevan, in Soviet Armenia, were counted. All through one twelve-hour period, the same message was broadcast by several people speaking some twenty different European and Asian languages. The message was the same in every language that Milo could understand and probably in those he could not understand, as well: it was the announcement of establishment of a completely free and independent State of Armenia, comprising parts of the Russian Caucasus, eastern Turkey, Iraq, Iran and northern Syria. Even as he listened to the broadcasts, Milo wondered if and how the Armenians would be able to conquer and/or hold so much territory. After that one day, there were no more broadcasts from the environs of Erevan, nor any response to his attempts to reach them.
He stayed on the radio until the underground gasoline tank was dry, then drained the tank of the vehicle in which he had arrived as well, using an absolute minimum of electricity for other things in order to keep the radio on the air. But all things must have an eventual end, and at long last the generator ground to a halt for lack of fuel. Had there been more than just the one storage battery, he might have rigged up a bicycle generator to keep them charged enough for a few air hours each day, but there was only the one left, and it would not have been sufficient for the needs of Noonan’s elaborate and powerful and energy-gobbling equipment.
He spent one day tripping or disarming all of the booby traps guarding the approaches to Noonan’s place, cleaned the house and secured it against weather or animals, but did not lock the closed doors. The next morning, he shouldered his gear and weapons and set his feet to the steep, narrow trail that led up the back wall of the box canyon, headed once more for the mountains. Such remnants as now remained of mankind could wait for a while.
Epilogue
Milo’s mind had been greatly eased when neither Wahrn Mehrdok nor Kahl Renee had been able to identify the pelt of the huge, vicious weaselly beast killed out on the prairie,
“It’s like nothing I’ve seen around these parts, Milo,” Mehrdok had stated emphatically, adding, “And a critter that big and toothy would be damned long in the forgetting. Although when I was trapping away up north of here, I did hear a tale of a critter that could’ve been his kind, said to live somewhere to the west of where I was. Could be that this one strayed down from there, last winter, maybe. I sure hope that was how it was, leastways. Critters like this is the last things we need hereabouts.”
Over the weeks, Rehnee and Mehrdok had ridden back to their community a couple of times to assure the people that they were still alive, meant to dwell with the nomads for a bit longer and were in no way prisoners or hostages in need of rescue.
With both threats—the possibility of a raid in force by Dirtmen and predation of the horse herd by another of the huge, strange beasts—neutralized, Milo and his people could relax their guard, relax it as much as the naturally wary Horseclansfolk ever did.
Wahrn Mehrdok slipped easily into the nomad life, and even the more provincial Kahl Rehnee showed that he could soon adapt to such a style of living free upon the plains and prairie, with no onerous birth-to-death bonds to one small plot of land. Also, the prairiecat Snowbelly, who—like all prairiecats—was a far better telepath than any human, had discovered in Rehnee a spark of quiescent mindspeak talent or ability and was nurturing it, exercising and developing it.
Spotted One, the jaguar-turned-prairiecat, found and enlarged an animal burrow near to the pasturage of the horse herd and there threw a litter of four blind mewling kittens, each of the beastlets only slightly larger than a grown rat. As she flatly refused to bring or allow twolegs to fetch her litter into camp where they could be completely safe from predatory animals, Milo ordered a sizable part of the butchering debris from each day’s hunt deposited at the mouth of the underground den—the offal and lights of herbivores so keenly relished by felines—so that Spotted One could be within sound if not sight of the den as much as possible and be spared long hunts.
Milo, Bard Herbuht and the other nomads were bursting with curiosity to see just what prairiecat-jaguar hybrids looked like, but Spotted One was grimly adamant; she promised death to any—with two legs, four or none at all—who essayed to come near her kittens. Therefore, the best Milo and the other mindspeakers could do was to enter into Spotted One’s mind, mesh theirs with it and view the newborn felines through her eyes, which showed them only that the kittens were about of a size with prairiecat kittens of the same age and that they were all four possessed of a constant hunger and of prodigious appetites for fresh mother’s milk. With this distinctly unsatisfying satisfaction, the nomads all had to be satisfied.
Then, of a day, Milo, Wahrn Mehrdok, Kahl Rehnee and Snowbelly had ranged far, far out to the west on a hunt, so that the two would-be nomads might learn the relative ease of hunting in company with a prairiecat. They had done well, and three antelope carcasses were tied onto the packhorses as earnest of their efforts. It was Mehrdok who, after tying the last knots, looked up and spoke aloud, in quiet warning.
“Milo, Kahl, look, there to the far west, obscuring the sun. It can be nothing but a prairie fire, a big one from the looks of it, too.
“Kahl, ride back to the farms and tell Daiv Djahnstuhn about this. Tell him to take some men and boys to the west bank of the creek and burn off all the brush for a half a mile beyond it. Set the womenfolks and kids to wetting down roofs, sidings, hayricks, anything that even looks flammable. Drive in and tightly pen up all the stock, too.
“Milo, best thing we can do for you and yours is to try to set backfires around your camp, drive the horses into the lake shallows and try to keep the critters there until the big fire has gone its way. Well, man, time’s a-wastin’—are we all to be alive this time tomorrow, let’s get going!” A note of urgency and agitation was now borne in the Dirtman’s tone.
But Milo continued sitting his horse and smiling. “Wahrn,” he said gently, “you’re wrong. That’s no fire-smoke, yonder; that’s dust, the trail dust thrown up by a moving clan and its herds.”
He mindspoke Snowbelly, beaming, “Cat brother, try to range a prairiecat mind off there to the southwest.”
A split second later, the big cat beamed back, “Not just one cat mind, Uncle Milo, but almost as many as I have claws on my feet. And I know those minds, too, they are of the cat clan septs that ride with Clans Staiklee and Gahdfree. The twolegs are less than a mile behind the cats.”
Milo beamed his thanks to the cat, then turned to the two farmers. “Clans Staiklee
and Gahdfree will shortly arrive, gentlemen. Let us get our kills back to camp and begin to prepare a suitable reception for the chiefs and subchiefs.”
At a fast amble, the three men, the five horses and the bounding cat headed east across the face of the rolling grasslands.
