The flames blazed up anew and sent sparks flying up into thewhispering darkness of the trees. The night had cooled off a little,but the humidity still hung on and a man felt uncomfortable--a littlefrightened, too.
Duncan lifted his head and stared up into the fire-flecked darkness.There were no stars because the heavy foliage shut them out. He missedthe stars. He'd feel better if he could look up and see them.
When morning came, he should go back. He should quit this hunt whichnow had become impossible and even slightly foolish.
But he knew he wouldn't. Somewhere along the three-day trail, he hadbecome committed to a purpose and a challenge, and he knew that whenmorning came, he would go on again. It was not hatred that drove him,nor vengeance, nor even the trophy-urge--the hunter-lust that proddedmen to kill something strange or harder to kill or bigger than any manhad ever killed before. It was something more than that, some weirdentangling of the Cytha's meaning with his own.
He reached out and picked up the rifle and laid it in his lap. Itsbarrel gleamed dully in the flickering campfire light and he rubbedhis hand along the stock as another man might stroke a woman's throat.
"Mister," said a voice.
* * * * *
It did not startle him, for the word was softly spoken and for amoment he had forgotten that Sipar was dead--dead with a half-smilefixed upon its face and with its throat laid wide open.
"Mister?"
Duncan stiffened.
Sipar was dead and there was no one else--and yet someone had spokento him, and there could be only one thing in all this wilderness thatmight speak to him.
"Yes," he said.
He did not move. He simply sat there, with the rifle in his lap.
"You know who I am?"
"I suppose you are the Cytha."
"You have done well," the Cytha said. "You've made a splendid hunt.There is no dishonor if you should decide to quit. Why don't you goback? I promise you no harm."
It was over there, somewhere in front of him, somewhere in the brushbeyond the fire, almost straight across the fire from him, Duncan toldhimself. If he could keep it talking, perhaps even lure it out--
"Why should I?" he asked. "The hunt is never done until one gets thething one is after."
"I can kill you," the Cytha told him. "But I do not want to kill. Ithurts to kill."
"That's right," said Duncan. "You are most perceptive."
For he had it pegged now. He knew exactly where it was. He couldafford a little mockery.
His thumb slid up the metal and nudged the fire control to automaticand he flexed his legs beneath him so that he could rise and fire inone single motion.
"Why did you hunt me?" the Cytha asked. "You are a stranger on myworld and you had no right to hunt me. Not that I mind, of course. Infact, I found it stimulating. We must do it again. When I am ready tobe hunted, I shall come and tell you and we can spend a day or two atit."
"Sure we can," said Duncan, rising. And as he rose into his crouch, heheld the trigger down and the gun danced in insane fury, the muzzleflare a flicking tongue of hatred and the hail of death hissingspitefully in the underbrush.
"Anytime you want to," yelled Duncan gleefully, "I'll come and huntyou! You just say the word and I'll be on your tail. I might even killyou. How do you like it, chump!"
And he held the trigger tight and kept his crouch so the slugs wouldnot fly high, but would cut their swath just above the ground, and hemoved the muzzle back and forth a lot so that he covered extra groundto compensate for any miscalculations he might have made.
* * * * *
The magazine ran out and the gun clicked empty and the vicious chatterstopped. Powder smoke drifted softly in the campfire light and thesmell of it was perfume in the nostrils and in the underbrush manylittle feet were running, as if a thousand frightened mice werescurrying from catastrophe.
Duncan unhooked the extra magazine from where it hung upon his beltand replaced the empty one. Then he snatched a burning length of woodfrom the fire and waved it frantically until it burst into a blaze andbecame a torch. Rifle grasped in one hand and the torch in the other,he plunged into the underbrush. Little chittering things fled toescape him.
He did not find the Cytha. He found chewed-up bushes and soil churnedby flying metal, and he found five lumps of flesh and fur, and thesehe brought back to the fire.
Now the fear that had been stalking him, keeping just beyond hisreach, walked out from the shadows and hunkered by the campfire withhim.
He placed the rifle within easy reach and arranged the five bloodychunks on the ground close to the fire and he tried with tremblingfingers to restore them to the shape they'd been before the bulletsstruck them. And that was a good one, he thought with grim irony,because they had no shape. They had been part of the Cytha and youkilled a Cytha inch by inch, not with a single shot. You knocked apound of meat off it the first time, and the next time you shot offanother pound or two, and if you got enough shots at it, you finallycarved it down to size and maybe you could kill it then, although hewasn't sure.
He was afraid. He admitted that he was and he squatted there andwatched his fingers shake and he kept his jaws clamped tight to stopthe chatter of his teeth.
The fear had been getting closer all the time; he knew it had moved inby a step or two when Sipar cut its throat, and why in the name of Godhad the damn fool done it? It made no sense at all. He had wonderedabout Sipar's loyalties, and the very loyalties that he had dismissedas a sheer impossibility had been the answer, after all. In the end,for some obscure reason--obscure to humans, that is--Sipar's loyaltyhad been to the Cytha.
But then what was the use of searching for any reason in it? Nothingthat had happened made any sense. It made no sense that a beast onewas pursuing should up and talk to one--although it did fit in withthe theory of the crisis-beast he had fashioned in his mind.
* * * * *
Progressive adaptation, he told himself. Carry adaptation far enoughand you'd reach communication. But might not the Cytha's power ofadaptation be running down? Had the Cytha gone about as far as itcould force itself to go? Maybe so, he thought. It might be worth agamble. Sipar's suicide, for all its casualness, bore the overtones oflast-notch desperation. And the Cytha's speaking to Duncan, itsattempt to parley with him, contained a note of weakness.
The arrow had failed and the rockslide had failed and so had Sipar'sdeath. What next would the Cytha try? Had it anything to try?
Tomorrow he'd find out. Tomorrow he'd go on. He couldn't turn backnow.
He was too deeply involved. He'd always wonder, if he turned back now,whether another hour or two might not have seen the end of it. Therewere too many questions, too much mystery--there was now far more atstake than ten rows of _vua_.
Another day might make some sense of it, might banish the dread walkerthat trod upon his heels, might bring some peace of mind.
As it stood right at the moment, none of it made sense.
But even as he thought it, suddenly one of the bits of bloody fleshand mangled fur made sense.
Beneath the punching and prodding of his fingers, it had assumed ashape.
Breathlessly, Duncan bent above it, not believing, not even wanting tobelieve, hoping frantically that it should prove completely wrong.
But there was nothing wrong with it. The shape was there and could notbe denied. It had somehow fitted back into its natural shape and itwas a baby screamer--well, maybe not a baby, but at least a tinyscreamer.
Duncan sat back on his heels and sweated. He wiped his bloody handsupon the ground. He wondered what other shapes he'd find if he putback into proper place the other hunks of limpness that lay beside thefire.
He tried and failed. They were too smashed and torn.
He picked them up and tossed them in the fire. He took up his rifleand walked around the fire, sat down with his back against a tree,cradling the gun across his knees.
* * * * *
Those little scurrying feet, he wondered--like the scampering of athousand busy mice. He had heard them twice, that first night in thethicket by the waterhole and again tonight.
And what could the Cytha be? Certainly not the simple, uncomplicated,marauding animal he had thought to start with.
A hive-beast? A host animal? A thing masquerading in many differentforms?
Shotwell, trained in such deductions, might make a fairly accurateguess, but Shotwell was not here. He was at the farm, fretting, morethan likely, over Duncan's failure to return.
Finally the first light of morning began to filter through the forestand it was not the glaring, clean white light of the open plain andbush, but a softened, diluted, fuzzy green light to match thesmothering vegetation.
The night noises died away and the noises of the day took up--thesawings of unseen insects, the screechings
The World That Couldn't Be Page 6
