“You’re late, Orth,” Veneem said in a low voice.
He knew he couldn’t blame the old driver, but neither could he hide the menace in his mood as he went out to meet him.
“I know.” Orth’s voice was muffled by the layers of cloth covering the lower half of his face. “The Elders wouldn’t let me load up until a short while ago. You’re the first stop.”
Veneem glanced back at Rana and shrugged. Still clad only in the thin tunic, she came out to help unload the milk, eggs, cheese, and flour.
“Did they give you any reason?” she asked, shivering in the breeze.
“Something about missing supplies. Somebody said it looked like a hairy got into the supply shed last night.”
Veneem was reaching for a large wheel of cheese when he heard the word “hairy.” His head snapped toward Orth while the rest of his body froze in position.
“A hairy? Last night?”
“Just talk. I wouldn’t give it a second—”
Veneem whipped around in one abrupt motion and strode toward the house. Rana trotted after him carrying a basket of eggs.
“Where are you going?”
“After that hairy.”
“But you heard Orth: just talk. Probably an excuse to make the wagon late.”
“Any other time I’d agree with you. But I saw this one just a short while ago.”
Passing through the doorway, he headed directly for the northwest corner of the room where he kept his crossbow.
Rana’s eyes were wide as she followed him. “And you didn’t go after it?”
“I didn’t know it was a hairy then. I wasn’t even sure I’d really seen anything. Now I know.”
“But you can’t leave now. It’s past midday already.”
He made no reply as he pulled his doubly thick hunting cloak from a peg and threw it over his shoulders. His respirations were rapid and his skin tingled with exhilaration. A hairy! There hadn’t been a confirmed sighting in years and the last kill had been longer ago than he cared to remember.
He had to bag this one. It meant reaffirmation of his status as First Hunter. No matter how displeased the Elders were with his daughter, they’d have to publicly recognize his primacy if he brought in a hairy. He knew where to start the hunt—that gave him an edge—but he’d have to leave now if he was to have a chance. By morning the beast would be far from the region.
Rana waited for a reply. Receiving none, she hurried to her room and emerged with another crossbow.
“No, Rana,” Veneem said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Not this time.”
“Especially this time, Father. I’ve never seen a live hairy and may never get another chance—there just aren’t any left around here.”
“No.” His voice was louder and firmer.
“Yes!” she hissed with sudden, unexplained intensity. “I’ve handled a bow and followed the trails with you and Mother since I was a child . . . I will not be left out of this!”
Veneem knew from her tone and defiant posture that there was no point in arguing. She was showing her mother’s side: When she made up her mind, that was that.
He girded his cloak around him with the broad belt that held his supply of hunting bolts, hefted his bow, and brushed past her on his way to the door.
“Get your horse then.”
Outside, he helped Orth finish unloading the supplies as Rana hurried around to the lean-to behind the house. The supply wagon had been turned and was on its way down the path toward the road by the time she led her bridled horse around to the front.
Veneem was momentarily awed by her appearance. Only two years since her mother’s death, yet in that short period she had grown from an awkward adolescent girl into a woman. She stood there, her eyes shining in anticipation, wearing her mother’s hunting cloak with her mother’s crossbow slung across her shoulder. His eyes suddenly blurred with excess moisture and his breath did not flow as easily as it should. Shuddering, he pulled himself up on the horse’s back. Maybe he didn’t deserve to be First Hunter again . . . he seemed to be losing his iron. If he kept on this way, he’d soon be a weepy, wilted old man before his time.
Expression set and teeth clenched, he gathered up the reins, gave the horse a harder than necessary kick, and raced off down the path. Rana hopped lightly onto her own mount and took chase.
They rode west at full gallop along the road toward the enclave center until Veneem pulled sharply to a halt and dismounted near a high thicket. Rana overrode the spot and walked her horse back. Veneem pushed his way into the chaotic tangle of leafless branches, thrashing about and cursing as the smaller twigs, stiff with winter, poked at him from all sides. Finally—
Tracks of cloth-wrapped feet. Tracks everywhere. Cheese rinds, too. It had been here. No doubt about it. Veneem followed the tracks a few paces into the trees, then called back over his shoulder.
“I knew it! Rana, bring the horses around!”
She led the animals back down the road until she found a break in the brush, then guided them through. Veneem awaited her in a clearing behind the thicket, a short distance from the road.
“Tether the horses there. It’s headed toward the big rocks.”
Rana did as she was bid and hurried after him. The trail was easy to follow.
“Did it ever occur to you,” she said, coming abreast and matching his stride with her long thin legs, “that a hairy may be more than just a dumb animal?” She watched him carefully as he replied.
“Never said the hairies were dumb. In fact, they’re the craftiest of all animals, as well as the tastiest. That’s why they’re such a prize.”
“But the way they wrap their feet and bodies against the cold . . . doesn’t that indicate a high level of intelligence to you?”
“Just imitation. They watch us, they steal our food and materials and copy what we do. They’re just game animals. It’s Revealed Truth.”
“Revealed by whom?”
“Are we going to have to go through that again? You’re courting sacrilege—just like at the last plenum when you made everyone so uncomfortable with your impertinence.”
“Who revealed the ‘truth’ that the hairies are animals?” she repeated in a dogged tone.
“Don’t ask foolish questions.” His voice took on the singsong tone of a recitation: “God made us in his image and speaks through the Elders to guide us back to our place as the lords of creation. Revealed Truths are the word of God.”
“God made us, did he?” A taunting smile seeped onto her face. “If that’s so, then we’re following the tracks of God.”
This statement brought Veneem to an abrupt halt. Rana, too, stopped. They faced each other in silence, their breath steaming, streaming from nostrils and parted lips.
“What madness is this?” he said in a hoarse voice. “Why do you torment me with this blasphemy?”
“I don’t mean to torment you, believe me. I just want you to know what I know. And now, while you’re hunting a hairy . . . it seems to be the best time to tell you.”
“Tell me what? That our most highly prized game animal is actually our Creator?” He started walking toward the rocks again. “I’m going to have Doctor Baken take a look at you tomorrow. Maybe he can come up with an elixir or something to—”
“Baken is my source of information!”
Once more Veneem stopped short. The answers to a number of niggling questions were suddenly clear. The doctor’s inquiries about Rana this morning were also explained.
“Baken, eh? That’s where you’ve been going when you disappear for a whole day.” He snorted. “Who’d have thought? So he’s the one who’s been filling your head with this garbage. I’ll have to have a little talk with Doctor Baken.”
“He’s a good man. We became friends while he was treating you and Mother after the accident.”
“He’s a fool and worse if he’s taught you to blaspheme!”
Veneem resumed his pursuit of the hairy but found it almost impossible to focus his att
ention on the trail. Dr. Baken had somehow corrupted Rana’s thinking. That in itself was bad. But more than a few ideas were at stake here: The heretical views Rana now held could endanger her life. That concerned him most. If she should ever start spouting such madness at a plenum—and she was impulsive enough to do just that given the proper provocation—the Elders would be duty bound to silence her. Forever.
And that would mean his end, as well. For he’d never allow anything to happen to her while he could raise a hand in her defense. She was all he had left. He had no one he could truly call a close friend—Nola had been that and a wife, too. They had formed a self-sufficient unit, the two of them—a threesome after Rana arrived. There had never been any need for outsiders.
Now they were two; no matter how wrong she was, they would not be divided.
They arrived at the big rocks, a pile of huge stone shards that rose above the forest and stretched away into the haze of the south. Veneem searched along the base of the formation until he found the place where the tracks disappeared.
“He started to climb here.”
As he began to hoist himself up on the first rock in pursuit, Rana laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Baken has books.”
Veneem dropped back to the ground again but remained facing away from his daughter. Utter hopelessness began to settle upon him. Rana was getting in deeper and deeper. Hiding books from the Elders was punishable by death. He ground his teeth in frustration. He couldn’t understand her—her constant questioning, her poking into things she should leave alone. Life was good under the Elders if you just tended to your business.
His voice was barely audible as he spoke the law: “Books are forbidden. They’re to be turned over to the Elders as soon as they’re found.”
“That’s so we won’t find out what’s inside them. Their authority would be destroyed if it became generally known that we’re the descendants—worse, yet, the creations—of the hairies!”
“Madness!” He still refused to look at her.
“No! Baken’s learned to read some of the books and he’s teaching me. He’s learned things. Incredible things. Things that go against everything we’ve ever been taught.”
“I have no wish to hear them,” he said as he found a foothold and began climbing the rocks.
Rana scrambled after him. “You’re going to have to listen to me, Father. Baken told me of the time some hunters brought in the carcass of a pregnant bitch hairy. She’d been nearing her time when they got her and he was able to examine the unborn baby. He says it looked just like we do at birth!”
“Be quiet!” Veneem said angrily. He was climbing as quickly as he could, whether in pursuit of the hairy or to escape his daughter’s blasphemies, he wasn’t quite sure. “The beast will hear us coming!”
But Rana refused to be put off and kept pace. “Did you know that we’re all born with pink skin and hair—hair on our heads and above our eyes? Sometimes fine hair on our arms and legs? And that our skin doesn’t turn green until we’ve been exposed to light? Nobody talks about that . . . the same way nobody admits that if you took a hairy, sheared his fuzz, and stained him green, he’d look as human as we do! It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that we come from the same stock.”
Veneem halted his climb and turned to face Rana. Leaning his back against a rock, he studied her a moment before speaking. He hid his anger and adopted the tone of a patient parent speaking to a rather dull-witted child. He raised his forearms diagonally before him, right angles at the elbows, his palms on edge toward Rana. The tips of the right and left middle fingers touched lightly at eye level to form a point.
“This,” he said, moving the right arm, “is the animal kingdom. This”—the left arm moved—“is the plant kingdom. At the apex are you and I and our kin: humanity, the highest form of life, the fusion of plant and animal. We have the best attributes of both kingdoms. In lean times we can take a certain amount of nourishment from the sun, and should we lose a limb we can grow a new one. No animal can do that. Yet we can move around and go where we wish, use our hands to build, and eat and drink in the winter months when the sun is weak. No plant can do that.”
He sighed. “Don’t you see? Not only does what you say go against Revealed Truth, it goes against common sense as well. The hairies belong solely to the animal kingdom. We are superior to them in every way. How could they have created us?”
“Baken says—”
“ ‘Baken says’!” he mimicked. “ ‘Baken says’! I’m sick of hearing about what Doctor Baken says! I’m after a game animal now—it’s my job. If you cannot be silent, go wait by the horses!”
Rana persisted. “Baken says that long ago the hairies took a cell from a—”
“Cell? What’s a cell?”
“As Baken explains it, it’s one of the uncountable little capsules, invisibly small, that make up the bodies of every living thing.”
It was Veneem’s turn to taunt. “Look at me! How many ‘cells’ do you see?”
She said, “When you stand on a hill and look at the beach, how many grains of sand do you see?” She did not wait for an answer. “As I was saying, the hairies took a cell from a plant and removed its nucleus—that’s the thing in the center of the cell that controls it—and replaced it with the nucleus from a cell of a hairy. For a while it was just a curiosity, but then they learned how to grow an entire organism from one of these cells. And then we were born. The hairies are the real humans . . . we’re their creations.”
Veneem made a contemptuous, snorting noise. “And you mock me for blindly accepting the teaching of the Elders! Look what you’ve just said: You’ve told me of something called a ‘cell’ which you admit you’ve never seen—can’t see—and then about something else inside this ‘cell.’ Then you tell me that the beasts who have to steal food from us to survive the winter actually grew us from one of these mythical little capsules. Really, Rana! Who’s the fool?”
“We’re all fools for believing the Elders for so long! We—”
Veneem’s right hand shot out and covered her mouth. A light shower of tiny sand particles had begun to fall, sliding and bouncing down from the rocks above, sprinkling their heads and shoulders.
“He’s up there!” he whispered. “And if he has ears he’s heard us.”
Unslinging his bow, Veneem drew the gut string back to the last notch, set the trigger, and put one of his heaviest bolts in the groove. To his left was a break in the rocks, about a man-length or so wide. He sidled over and peered into it. Empty. A high-walled gully sloped upward for a short distance, then banked off to the right. With weapon at ready, he began his ascent.
The floor of the gully was smooth—it probably served as a water run-off during the spring—with patches of ice in scattered recesses. He heard a sudden loud crunch from up around the bend, then nothing. The sound was repeated, followed by a series of lesser noises, and then a large boulder bounded around the curve in the gorge and came rolling at him. Veneem gauged its path and ran upward toward the bend, allowing the stone to bounce off the far wall and pass him on his left.
Reaching the curve, he saw it—a buck hairy. Tall, thin, full mane on head and face; his torso and lower legs were wrapped in tattered cloth and he had just kicked loose a second boulder. With no time to aim properly, Veneem chanced a quick shot from waist level. The hairy howled in pain and clutched its left thigh as Veneem leaped to avoid the oncoming stone juggernaut.
Too late. He misjudged its ungainly wobbling roll and it struck him a glancing blow on the rib cage as it passed. Pain lanced up to his left shoulder and down along his flank as he fell on his back and began to slide down the gully headfirst. For a few heartbeats he could not draw a breath. Then, as his oxygen-starved mind was about to panic, air began to gush in and out of his lungs in ragged gusts. He hauled himself into a sitting position and waited for the pain to subside.
Rana had heard the wail of the wounded hairy and she now peered around the corner of the gu
lly. Seeing her father leaning against the rocks with his hand pressed against his ribs, she dropped her bow and scurried up to his side.
“Are you all right?” Her expression was frantic.
Still gasping, Veneem nodded and pointed back the way they had come. “Help me up. I wounded him but he still might be dangerous.”
Rana took his bow and his arm and led him back to safety. When they reached their previous position, Veneem sank to his knees.
“We’ll let him bleed.”
“Where’d you get him?”
“Leg.”
Her eyes darted back and forth as her mind seemed to race. “Then we can take him alive!”
“Never!” Veneem was getting his wind back.
“We must! We may never get another chance like this to learn the truth about the hairies.”
“I already know the truth!” He spat the words. “And it’s part of the law that all hairies must be hunted down and killed like the wild game they are!”
Rana seemed ready to leap at him.
“How many ‘game animals’ have set a trap for you, Father? That’s not just a wild beast up there!”
Veneem rose slowly, painfully to his feet. “No more of your fever dreams, please. I’ve more pressing matters to attend to. Silence, now!”
“No! I want you to think about what I’ve said before you kill it.”
“I am thinking and I’ve been thinking. You must think! If the hairies had the power and the intelligence to create us, what happened to them? Where is their mighty civilization? Answer me that!”
“Baken says”—Veneem growled at the name—“that in their toying with the stuff of life they somehow altered one of the things that make us sick and a great plague swept the world. A famine followed. After that, those who didn’t get sick or starve to death went mad, killing each other and destroying their cities. We survived. The plague had no effect on us and we could augment our nourishment by sun-soaking. We multiplied while they died.
“Only a few hairies are left. They hide in the ruined cities. That’s why we’re forbidden to go there—because we’d find out that the ‘Truths’ of the Elders are lies and their hold would be broken!”
A Soft Barren Aftershock Page 23
