That night, lying in his sleeping bag, looking up at the huge green, blue and white moon through the branches of an evergreen, he thought that he lacked only two things to make him completely happy. One was a deep drink of some good dark German or Danish beer or top-rate bourbon. The second was a woman who would love him and whom he could love.
Before he realised what he had done, he found Awina's furry hand in his and coming close to his mouth. He had unconsciously reached over and picked it up and was about to kiss it.
"My Lord!" Awina said in a tremulous voice.
He did not reply. He gently put her hand back on the top of her sleeping bag and turned away.
But she said, "Look!" and he sat up and stared through the branches at the thing at which she was pointing.
Black and winged, a silhouette only, he flapped across the moon and then was gone.
"What was that?"
"I did not know that any were around," she said. "It has been some time since . . . that was an opeawufeapauea."
"A winged thinking person—hairless," he murmured, translating into English.
"The Thululiki," she added.
"Are they dangerous?"
"You do not remember?"
"Would I ask if I did?"
"Forgive me, Lord. I do not mean to anger you. No, they are not generally dangerous. Neither we nor the Wagarondit our enemies kill them. They are of great service to all."
Ulysses questioned her some more and then went to sleep. He dreamed of bats with human faces.
Two days later, they came to the first Wagarondit village. Long before, the drums had announced that they had been seen. Singing Bear occasionally glimpsed the scouts as they ran from tree to tree or peeked out from behind bushes. They followed along a broad and deep creek which held a number of black and white fish about three feet long. He investigated and decided they were not fish but mammals: pygmy porpoises. Awina said that the Wagarondit held them sacred and only killed one once a year at a ceremony. The Wufea did not consider them sacred, but since these were found only in enemy territory, they never bothered them. If a Wufea raiding party killed one, and the Wagarondit came across the body, they would know that there were Wufea in the area.
About five miles afterward, they left the creek and went up a high steep hill. On the other side, in a valley on top of a low hill, was the Wagarondit village.
The clan houses were round. Otherwise, it looked much like the Wufea settlement. The warriors gathered before the open gates, however, were brown-furred and had black bars across the eyes and cheeks. And they carried bolas and swords of some wood in addition to the stone assegais, knives and tomahawks.
Their standard bore the skull of a giant road-runner. Awina had told him that this was the superclan totem, the chief of all the clans of the Wagarondit. They held the roadrunner, the apuaukauey, sacred, but they initiated their young warriors by setting one against a giant bird. The initiate would be armed only with a bola and a spear, and he had to bring the bird down by throwing the three-stoned bola around its legs and then cutting off its head. There were at least four young braves a year from each village killed in this dangerous ceremony.
Ulysses leading, the procession started down the long steep hill. The Wagarondit beat on the great drums and whirled bullroarers. A priest, bristling with feathers all over, shook a gourd at them and, presumably, was chanting something, though at this distance Ulysses could hear nothing through the din of the instruments.
Halfway down the hill, Awina said, "Lord!" and pointed toward the sky. The great-winged bat-like creature was gliding toward them. Ulysses watched him as he wheeled before them. Awina had not lied or exaggerated. He was a winged human or near-human. His body was about the size of a four-year-old child. The torso was quite human except for the enormous chest. The breastbone had to be very large for attachment of the great wing muscles. The back was also hunched; the mound looked like solid muscle. His arms were very skinny, and the hands had very long fingers with long nails. The legs were short, frail and bowed. The feet were splayed out, and the big toe was almost at right angles to the feet.
The wings were bone and membrane, the ends attached to the mound of muscle on the back. He had six limbs, the first six-limbed mammal Ulysses had ever seen. But it might not be the last. This planet—or this Earth—had to have many strange things in store for him.
The face was triangular. The head was bulging, round and totally bald. The ears were so big they looked like auxiliary wings. The eyes were large for the face and from a distance looked pale.
There did not seem to be a hair on the naked creature.
The man was smiling as he swept down and half-folded his wings and dropped onto his skinny legs and broad feet. He waddled toward them, having lost all grace the moment he touched ground. He lifted a thin arm and spoke in a piping child-like voice in Ayrata.
"Greetings, god of stone! Ghlikh greets you and wishes you a long godhood!"
Ulysses understood him well enough, but he could not speak the trade language with any fluency as yet. He said, "Can you speak Wufea?"
"Easily. One of my favourite languages," Ghlikh said. "We Dhulhulikh speak many tongues, of which Wufea is one of the least difficult."
Ulysses said, "What news do you bring, Ghlikh?"
"Much to amuse and inform. But with your permission, my Lord, we will put that off until later. At the moment, I am empowered by the Wagarondit to speak first with you. They wish you well, which they should, since you are also their god—they think."
The bat-man's tone was slightly sarcastic. Ulysses looked hard at him, but Ghlikh only smiled, exposing long yellowish teeth.
Ulysses said, "They think?"
"Well," Ghlikh answered, "they cannot under-stand why you took the part of the Wufea when they were only intent on bringing you to this village where you could be properly honoured, or what they think is such."
Ulysses wanted to push on and ignore the creature, who was making him somewhat queasy. But Awina had told him that the bat-people were the couriers, the representatives, the gossipers, and the functionaries of many things. It was protocol that a bat-man act as arbitrator between two parties who wished to make arrangements for peace, trade or sometimes for a limited war. In addition, the batmen sometimes became traders themselves, flying in with small, lightweight, but much desired goods from some unknown country, perhaps their own.
"You tell them that I was attacked by two of their number. And for this I punished all of them," Ulysses said.
"I will tell them so," Ghlikh said. "And do you plan any more punishment?"
"Not unless they do something to deserve it."
Ghlikh hesitated and swallowed audibly, his craggy Adam's apple jumping like a monkey on a stick. Evidently he was not as superior as he pretended to be. Or perhaps he knew that he was vulnerable while on the ground, however lofty his opinion of himself was.
"The Wagarondit say that it is only fair that they should ask even a god to prove that he is a god."
Awina, standing behind Ulysses, whispered, "Lord, forgive me. But a word of advice might help. These arrogant Wagarondit need a lesson, and if you let them push you around . . ."
Ulysses agreed with her, but he did not want advice unless he asked for it. He held up his hand to indicate that she should be quiet. To Ghlikh he said, "I do not have to prove anything, but I can be petitioned."
Ghlikh smiled as if he had guessed that Ulysses would say that. The sun struck pale flames in his cat-yellow eyes. He said, "The Wagarondit, then, beg you to kill The Old Being With The Long Hand. The monster has been ravaging the fields and even the villages for many years. He has destroyed many crops and storehouses and sometimes puts entire villages close to starvation. The Old Being has killed many warriors close to starvation. The Old Being has killed many warriors sent out against him, crippled others, and always conquered. Or he has run away, eluding whole hunting parties, only to show up elsewhere and tromp down and eat whole fields of corn or cru
sh houses and push over great palisades of heavy logs."
"I will consider their petition," Ulysses said, "and I will answer in the next few days. Meanwhile, unless there is something else to talk about, let us go on."
"There is only trivia, news and gossip I bring from many villages of many tribes of different peoples," Ghlikh said. "You may find some of it entertaining or even instructive, my Lord."
Ulysses did not know if that last was a sneer at the supposed omniscience of a god, but he decided to let it pass. However, if it became necessary, he would grab hold of the skinny little monster and wring his neck as an object lesson. The bat-people might be scared, or at least privileged, but if this fellow became too insulting, he could damage Ulysses' image as a god.
They walked down the hill and across the floor of the valley, passing over a wooden bridge over a creek about three hundred feet wide. On the other side were fields of corn and other plants and also meadows on which a red-wooled sheep with three crumpled horns chomped on the long blue-green grass. The number of stone and wooden hoes and scythes left in the fields showed that the women and children had been working up to the last moment.
To the beat of the drums, the Wufea marched up to the gates, and here Ulysses confronted the chiefs and the priests. The bat-man had launched himself from the hillside and had flown above them as they had marched across the valley. Now he glided in and landed a few feet away from Ulysses, running a little distance after coming to earth. He came back, waddling on his bowed legs, his leathery boneribbed wings half-open.
There was more talk, conducted with Ghlikh as go-between. Then the overchief, Djiidaumokh, sank to his knees and rubbed Ulysses' hand on his forehead. The other chiefs and priests followed, and Ulysses and his band entered the village.
There were several days of feasting and speech-making before Ulysses continued his march. He visited ten Wagarondit villages in all. Ulysses was curious about what payment Ghlikh got for his services. Ghlikh by now rode with them on the back of a Wagarondit brave, his bandy legs wrapped around the thick furry neck.
"My payment!" he said, waving his hand airily. "Oh, I am fed and lodged and a few other of my needs are taken care of. I am a simple person. I only want to talk to many different peoples, to converse, to satisfy my curiosity and theirs, to be of service. I derive my greatest joy from being of service."
"That is all you ask?"
"Oh, sometimes I accept a few baubles, some gemstones or excellently carved figurines or objects like that. But my main item of trade is information,"
Ulysses did not comment, but he felt that there was more to Ghlikh's business than he said.
On the way back to the first Wagarondit village, the chief, Djiidaumokh, asked him what he meant to do about the Old Being With The Long Hand.
"The people of Nisheymanakh, the third village we visited, have sent a messenger saying that The Old Being has ravaged one of their fields again. He killed two warriors who went after him."
Ulysses sighed. Noblesse oblige could not be put off.
He said, "Let us go after this creature at once."
He called Ghlikh to him and said, "Have the Wagarondit ever used you to locate The Old Being With The Long Hand?"
"Never," Ghlikh said.
"Why not?"
"They never thought of it, I suppose."
"And you never thought of telling them how valuable you could be?"
"No. I suppose that The Old Being is more valuable to me alive than dead. If he is dead, then I have just that much less exciting news."
"You will locate The Old Being," Ulysses said.
Ghlikh's eyes narrowed, and his thin lips became a thread. But he said, "Of course, my Lord."
Ulysses knew from conversations he had overheard that at least four generations of Wagarondit had known The Old Being. But he was not always in Wagarondit territory. Sometimes he disappeared for years, and he must then be ravaging the unknown peoples to the north, the west and perhaps in the great forest to the east. He was a huge animal and he had a big territory to cover.
From the description he had pieced together, Ulysses knew that The Old Being had to be an elephant of some sort. But what an elephant! He must be twenty feet high at the shoulder and he had four tusks! The upper tusks curved upward and the lower tusks curved down and back. The Long Hand was the proboscis.
The Old Being's wiliness, his avoidance of traps, his deadly ambushes, his ability to disappear, were legendary.
"He has far more intelligence than you would expect from a nonsentient," Ulysses said to Ghlikh. Awina stood near them.
"Who said he was one who had no speech?" Ghlikh said.
Ulysses was surprised. "You mean, he can talk?"
Ghlikh's eyelids lowered. He said, "I would not know, of course. I was merely pointing out that no one actually knows whether or not he can talk."
"Is he the only one of his kind?" Ulysses said.
"I would not know. There are those who say that there are many of his kind many marches to the north. I do not know."
"You should," Ulysses said. "You get around a lot. You fly far, and even if you do not go north, surely there are others of your people who do."
"I do not know," Ghlikh said, but Ulysses thought he detected a barely repressed amusement on his face.
He shoved down his anger, however, and said, "Tell me, Ghlikh, have you ever seen . . . ?" and then he halted. There was no word for metal in the Wufea speech. Not as far as he knew, anyway. He proceeded to describe metal. Then, remembering his knife, he brought it out and unfolded it. Ghlikh, his eyes wide, breathing harder than he should, asked permission to handle the blade. Ulysses watched him while the long skinny fingers felt the steel, gently ran the edge of his thumb over the edge, tasted it with his warty tongue, and held it flat against the vellum cheek. Finally, Ghlikh handed the knife back.
The Neshgai, he continued in response to Ulysses' questioning, were a race of giants who lived in a giant village of giant houses made of some strange material. Their city was on the southern coast of this land. On the other side of Wurutana. The Neshgai walked on two legs, and their tusks were only two and very tiny compared to those of The Old Being. But they had big ears and a long nose that fell to their waists. They looked as if they were descended from a creature something like The Old Being.
Ulysses was so full of questions he did not know which to ask first.
"What is your idea of Wurutana?" he said.
His question was phrased thus because he did not want Ghlikh to know how ignorant he was of his ancient enemy.
Ghlikh, startled, said, "What do you mean? My idea?"
"What is Wurutana to you?"
"To me?"
"Yes. What would you call him?"
"The Great Devourer. The All-Powerful. He Who Grows."
"Yes, I know, but what does he look like? To you?"
Ghikh must have guessed that Ulysses was trying to get a description of something which he did not know. Ghlikh smiled so sarcastically that Ulysses wanted to smash that thin skull.
"Wurutana is so vast that I cannot find words to describe him."
"You chatterbox!" Ulysses said. "You runner-off-at-the-mouth! Winged monkey-face! You cannot find words?"
Ghlikh looked sullen but did not say anything. Ulysses then said, "Very well! Tell me! Are there beings like me anywhere on this land?"
Ghlikh said, "Oh, yes, some!"
"Well, where are they?"
"On the other side of Wurutana. On the seacoast, many marches west of the Neshgai."
"Why didn't you tell me about them?" Ulysses cried.
Ghlikh looked astonished. He said, "Why should I? You did not ask me about them. It is true that they look much like you, but they are no gods. They are just another race of sentients to me."
So now he had the most urgent of reasons to go south. He would have to confront Wurutana, whether he wanted to or not. If the Wufea and Ghlikh were to be believed, Wurutana covered the land except on the north a
nd south seacoasts.
Ghlikh drew a rough map of the land’s outlines in the mud of a creek bank.
North was land marked Unknown. Below that was a crude triangle with the northern part forming the broad base. There was ocean or sea on all parts except the northern unknown. Ghlikh said rumours were that the sea was there too.
Ulysses wondered if the land was all that was left of the eastern part of the United States. The level of the ocean could be much higher. Thus, the Midwest and the Atlantic coastal plain would be submerged. This land might be all of what was left of the former Appalachian Mountain Range. Of course, while he was in his "petrified" state, he could have been taken to other continents and this might be all that was left of a certain part of Eurasia. Or he could be on another planet of another star. He did not think so, but it was possible.
The Stone God Awakens Page 4
