by Chad Oliver
She was simply ignored. She did not count. The Enemy had no name for what she was. In his world, to be nameless was to be nothing.
She shivered. She tried to wrap herself in her curled tail. There had been a time when that had given her security. It did not work on this day, in this place.
The terror was too great.
Part of it was the loss of her mate. They had been bonded for many seasons. But there was more.
She had a child within her. One child. She had been a mother before, but never the mother of a single child. That was unnatural. It was as though the end of her species was known. Nothing could be spared, nothing wasted.
Her universe was not the same.
Ancient wisdom whispered to her to be still, to merge with the earth and the grass and the wood of the trees.
She could no longer listen.
Slowly, slowly, she extended her white-tipped brown tail. Painful as it was, impossible as it was, she had to act.
The old ways would not work.
She had to make her move, or die.
Even his friends often referred to him as Old Four-Eyes. It was a tag that had been hung on him as far back as high school.
Paul Shudde’s thickish wire-framed glasses were fogging up from the humidity, but that was no big deal. There was nothing to look at anyway.
The hearing room was the same one the City Council used, and it fitted the standard pattern: comfortable padded swivel chairs behind the long table for the board members, hard wooden benches for the unfortunate petitioners.
Paul Shudde was waiting his turn. The Planning and Zoning Board, known not too affectionately as PAZBO, had to follow the posted agenda. But there was no way to tell how long each item would take. The hearings sometimes went on well past midnight. They were not well attended. If you didn’t have to be there, you weren’t.
At the moment, Big Buddy was holding forth. It was not the first time. “I love the environment,” Big Buddy purred. “Nobody in Lakeview Oaks has done more to protect nature than I have.”
Paul Shudde knew what was coming. He wished he could shut it out. Big Buddy was about to regale PAZBO again with the enthralling tale of how he had blown the whistle on the commercial doughnut enterprise sneaking into the rich shaded streets of Lakeview Oaks. Not a quaint and upscale little doughnut shop, mind you, but a chain called Soppin’ Sinkers. Good Lord, next thing you know the hamburger franchises would creep around the corner and there might be Belt Busters and Mustard Whoppers in Paradise.
The doughnut story bored the socks off everyone but Big Buddy, but Earl Collins—Big Buddy’s real name—was decidedly cozy with the dedicated volunteers of PAZBO. He cultivated them tirelessly. He practically lived in the hearing room, his spotless alligator boots never scuffing the carpet, his belt buckle flashing as big as a hubcap, his creased cowboy hat that had never known sweat or felt the sun being doffed respectfully now to this board member, now to that. Big Buddy’s aftershave lotion was sweet enough to draw flies, which it did. PAZBO would listen as long as Big Buddy wanted to talk, and then they would grant him his variance.
That was the way it was.
It was after ten when Paul Shudde got his shot. He expected to lose, of course. He was up against Money. In his experience, which was considerable, Paul Shudde versus Money was a case with a predetermined outcome.
Lakeview Oaks didn’t quite know what to make of Paul Shudde. A syndicated columnist for small-town newspapers wasn’t a real writer. He didn’t produce fat books about Texas that were bound in cowhide and placed proudly on coffee tables. Just the same, he had a handful of loyal readers. That meant at least some publicity, and PAZBO thrived on thundering silence.
“Mr. Chairman,” Paul said. He reached into his scruffy pants, pulled out a handkerchief that had seen better days, and wiped off his glasses. “I will be brief, although my worship of the environment is possibly equal to that of the previous petitioner.”
The PAZBO chairman frowned. He didn’t appreciate sarcasm, whether in Paul Shudde’s column or in person. This was serious business to him, and the chairman had nothing if not dignity. He wasn’t a real porker, but he was amply fleshed enough to show that he had not missed many meals in his lifetime. He had one of those ruddy complexions that could have been attributed to earnest outdoor activity, high blood pressure, or good whiskey. He had blue eyes as dead as marbles.
“Mr. Shudde,” he said, spreading his arms as though in benediction, “I fervently hope that you have something new to say to us tonight.”
“I do, Mr. Chairman.” Paul managed to get it out with a straight face: “I am pleased to report that the hotplate has been removed from the loft over the carport.”
Mrs. Langley, the only female on PAZBO, actually smiled. She was very nearly human.
The chairman tapped his pencil on the long table. “That leaves us with the somewhat related problems of square footage and exterior trim,” he intoned. He said it precisely as he might have said, “You give us no other option, Shudde. We will have to blow up the planet.”
Paul did the best he could. He identified deeply with every bewildered peasant who had ever confronted a mindless bureaucracy. “I have a plan to put up rock facing over the tarpaper section,” he said. “I can enclose the breezeway between the house and the carport. That will pick up close to another two hundred square feet.”
That caused a stir. The PAZBO representatives were forced to confer in whispers. It wasn’t that Paul’s response to their edict was satisfactory, of course, but Paul was moving toward compliance. That had legal implications.
The chairman finally asked, “How long do you think these alterations will take?”
“Exactly six months,” Paul Shudde said. He had no intention whatever of doing the work, but he was buying time. If he asked for a continuance of no more than six months and appeared to be working on a solution, the board had to grant his request.
The chairman’s ruddy complexion flushed to beet red. He was between a rock and a hard place.
It was no secret in Lakeview Oaks that this whole idiotic mess was a result of political agitation against the grandfather clause. That was the one that allowed older residents of the area considerable latitude in conforming to new building codes. It was the principle that permitted Paul Shudde’s antiquated overgrown cabin to exist in the posh bedroom community of Lakeview Oaks.
The stink about the hotplate was that it raised the awful specter of someone actually taking in boarders in Lakeview Oaks. The nonsense about exterior trim and square footage was to ensure that only the right people—that is, wealthy ones—lived in the area.
Paul Shudde had tarpaper on his house.
If, miraculously, he snookered PAZBO this time, there were other ways to get rid of Paul Shudde.
Nothing dramatic like concrete overshoes and a body in the lake. Just a slight zoning change here, a bit of a property reappraisal there.
Tax him out.
That was the civilized way.
Paul Shudde did not belong in Lakeview Oaks. It was no place for mavericks.
“Six months,” the chairman said and banged his gavel.
Paul Shudde pushed his way out into the warm Texas night. He felt neither triumph nor sadness at his latest skirmish with PAZBO.
He felt lost.
He was losing his home, and he had nowhere to go.
She had not chosen the old house by the lake at random.
There were several things that attracted her to it. First, there was no dog. Paul Shudde (she knew his name) had a cat that was so relaxed it spent most of its time dozing on the ground with all four paws folded into the air. It responded to all challenges with near total indifference. Squirrels ate out of its food dish with impunity. Second, there was the house itself. It was different from all the others. It had a worn, comfortable smell to it. Third, the house did not have a true yard. There was fairly thick brush around it and a tangle of sharp-needled cedars. There was cover, if it came to that. Final
ly, there was the lake. Even with all the power boats that raced madly from nowhere to nowhere, she liked the water. She could not swim as well as the raccoon, for whom she was often mistaken, and she did not eat as many fish. But she knew her way around in the lake.
She could swim across to the other side, of course. The lake was only a wide river controlled by the great concrete dams the Enemy had built. The problem was that both sides of the lake were the same. One side was as crowded and stinking and blotched with manthing structures as the other.
Her heart pounded wildly as she belly-crawled down the side of the driveway to the edge of the carport. Her damp cold nose filled with the sharp scent of the Enemy. The warning signs of the manthings almost smothered her. It was hard for her to breathe.
Every ancient urge within her screamed to her that she was wrong. She was built for concealment, designed to look like many other creatures. She could freeze more completely than any possum.
She was not weak. She could fight when the odds were reasonable. She had done so more than once. But that was not her way.
To call attention to herself deliberately, to crouch in a carport, where headlights would be certain to pick her out—well, that was crazy. That was suicide.
Wasn’t it?
Her brown lustrous eyes opened wide. Even by star-glow, she could see her own muzzle and tactile hairs.
She hated the brain and the sensing that had forced her to this place. It would be far easier to do what her kind had always done. It would be easier to pretend that the old ways were still working. Yes, it would be easier to die and be done with it.
It was living that was hard.
She knew that the true suicide was to refuse to change when the time had come. She was not like a deer, who could adapt reasonably well to crowding. A deer could coexist with the Enemy right up to the time when he got his antlers blown off in hunting season. She could not do that. She was not put together that way. She needed room to live her life. She needed her own space to create what she was.
It was all gone.
She had been so shattered by the horror and noise and confusion around her that she was pregnant with a single child. One.
She could not hide from herself.
She needed help. There weren’t many places she could look. She did not know what would happen.
She tensed. Her soft glowing eyes opened still wider.
See?
The headlights were turning into the driveway.
In moments, she would have her answer.
The Ford pickup with the camper shell on the back was quite ordinary except for the discreet lettering on the door on the driver’s side. It read:
PAUL SHUDDE
FAMOUS OUTDOOR WRITER
Nobody ever got the joke, of course. That was the point.
Paul knew a man in Kerrville who had managed to sell a grand total of two stories about hunting polar bears. He had promptly put his name and the legend FAMOUS OUTDOOR WRITER on both his Jeep and his stationery. Paul had figured that the man was insane, but then the freebies had started coming. Whenever the mighty hunter wrote to a manufacturer and used his letterhead, he was deluged with rods, guns, and tents.
So Paul had tried his own version, with a notable lack of results.
His mind still on the PAZBO meeting that would eventually take his home away from him, Paul rolled into his driveway and stopped just short of the carport.
He spotted the animal right away. It was caught in the pickup headlight beams. It did not pull back. It did not cower. It simply crouched there like a child’s play-bear made out of gray-brown fur. Its eyes were unblinking. They looked as big as saucers.
Paul noticed that his prudent cat had vanished.
Paul set the transmission on park and switched off the engine. He kept the headlights on but he did hit the dimmer switch.
He climbed out of the cab, carefully.
At first, Paul was not much interested in what the animal looked like. It was its behavior that concerned him.
The animal should have tried to run away. At least, it should have retreated into some of the carport junk. It might even have attacked if it was startled and trapped.
The creature did nothing at all.
It did not act like a normal animal.
Rabies?
Paul took a closer look at it, positioning himself so that he did not cover the creature with his shadow. It did not look sick. Eyes were bright, tongue was not coated or dripping, fur was clean and healthy.
What the animal looked like was—well, weird.
Paul gave one of those insincere smiles that people try out on small children and unfamiliar animals. “What in the world are you?” he asked.
The thought occurred to him that the question might not be rhetorical at all.
Paul Shudde was not a trained zoologist but he was a native of Texas. He had a writer’s curious eye and he had spent enough time outside the cities to know a chuck-will’s-widow from a common whippoorwill. He had also read a few books in his time.
This beast was a new one on him.
It was about the size of a coon—a female, not a male—and it had a grayish bandit’s mask that was very coonlike. (He had no idea whether this particular specimen was a male or a female, and he was in no hurry to pick it up to find out.) The ears would have horrified a raccoon; they were long, soft, floppy things that belonged on a rabbit of some sort. The tail was not ringed; it was a white-tipped squirrel tail and it arched over the animal’s back as he had seen squirrels do with their tails so many times. While it crouched, Paul could not tell much about its legs or feet. The most striking thing about the wide brown eyes was that they were clearly intelligent.
This was no dummy he was looking at.
He realized that if he had not framed the animal in his headlights and looked closely at it he would have mistaken it for something else. It resembled many other things. Nobody would ever look at it twice, unless—
Unless the animal wanted to be examined.
Was that possible?
Paul Shudde took a deep breath, moved slowly back to the pickup, and cut the lights.
“Come on in if that’s what you want,” he said softly. He was quite sure the beast could understand every word. “Or you’re welcome to bunk in the carport.”
Taking his own sweet time about it, Paul walked along the breezeway, opened the door to his house, and switched on an inside lamp. Yellow light splashed out into the darkness.
Paul could hear the gentle splashing of a small ripple against the lakeshore.
He crossed his fingers.
If that thing was what it appeared to be, his troubles were over.
He sank into his favorite chair and held his breath.
Slowly, hesitantly, reluctantly, the animal moved inside. It was very frightened.
Paul Shudde exhaled and smiled a big genuine smile.
Unless he was very much mistaken, salvation had just followed him through the door.
Run!
She had no experience with the interior of a manthing’s house. She was confused. The conflict between what she wanted to do and what she had to do was tearing her apart.
Run! Get out! Fade into nothingness! That was what millions of years of her heritage shouted to her. She was no longer an insect-eater who stayed in the trees. The great stinking lizards were gone, all of them. But the feelings were the same.
To expose herself in artificial light was a horror to her. It was more than that. She was using the other side of her innate talent. She was actually forcing the Enemy to focus on her.
He had to understand what she was. Had to!
She did not know whether she had made a fatal mistake or not. The four-eyed Paul Shudde was not like the others, she was sure of that. But what was he like?
He was smart. In some ways, he was even smarter than she was. Allowing for what he was, he was not really vicious or bloodthirsty. He probably would come down on her side, more or less.
&nbs
p; But was he a shade too cunning? Had he searched for angles so long that he couldn’t see something straight and simple?
She was not at all certain that she trusted Paul Shudde. Not with her life. Not with the life of her unborn child.
But there was no one else.
Nothing.
She crouched on the floor in the house of the Enemy. She let the light hit her smack in the eyes.
She desperately hoped that if she didn’t look interesting she at least looked cute.
Endangered species. The two words burned themselves into Paul Shudde’s brain.
It took him a few days to see all the ramifications, but Paul Shudde was not slow on the uptake. He was not a man who required a crowbar blow to the head before he grasped things. Old Four-Eyes was a pretty fair country poker player, and the pale blue eyes behind the thick glasses were sharp.
A minnow could stop a giant dam from being built, if it was the right minnow.
How about a species that was not only endangered but previously unknown? How about a brand-new kind of threatened animal that had chosen to live in Paul Shudde’s house?
He laughed out loud. He thought about PAZBO and he smelled something profoundly unusual: victory.
He waved at his visitor, who was hunkered down in the kitchen. The animal was watching him with those strange brown eyes. He had figured out her sex by now—she was a mammal, after all—and it seemed to him that she was a bit fatter than she had been. She had eaten everything that he had given her except for spinach, broccoli, and beets. She did not care for vegetables.
She was death on bugs. Paul Shudde’s house was extraordinarily free of flies, mosquitoes, ants, spiders, and ticks. He was properly grateful.
He had not named her. That seemed wrong to him. She was not a pet. He did not own her.
“Friend,” he said, “you are about to become famous.”
She stared at him. He knew that she understood most of what he said to her. He did not know how she did that, but she did. He could also usually sense her reactions to what he said. She did not communicate through language, but she was not ignorant of how it worked. And she could influence his perceptions a little. He could get happiness or sorrow, pleasure or pain, agreement or dissent.
