Masters of Everon (12 page)

Jef shivered in spite of himself.

"Will he..." Jef hesitated. "Will a full-grown male like that stay out of any human's way?"

"Unless there's a reason—probably." Jarji looked over the now-low flames of the fire at him, thoughtfully. "Nothing bothers anything here, without a reason. You're going to have to learn that, if you figure to stick around."

"I know," said Jef.

She looked at him with surprise, and some approval—for the first time.

"You might manage to get by, after all," she said, "if you don't get killed before you learn your way around. If you don't know something, don't guess at it. Ask somebody, if there's somebody around to ask, or stay clear until you do know."

Jef nodded. The puzzling behavior of Mikey when they had encountered the galushas came back to nag at him.

"I ran into something odd earlier today," he said slowly.

"Oh? What was that?"

He told her. When he had finished describing what had happened, she nodded.

"That was their mating dance," she said. "Now that's just what I was telling you."

"Mating dance—you mean the galushas?"

"That's right. They'll start playing like that—a dozen or more of them at once, and break up into smaller groups, and then, one by one, an extra male, or an extra female'll drop out. It's a way they have of choosing."

"But why did Mikey act the way he did?"

"I
said!"
She came down on the second word with emphasis. "Here on Everon nothing interferes with anything else without a reason. Any species that's mating, they're safe from the predators that'd ordinarily take them. Individuals from two species that'd ordinarily fight on sight, don't fight. Maolots are territorial, but at mating time they cross territory lines and there's never any argument."

"Is there any connection between that and the way this male maolot of yours has a truce with you?" She shook her head.

"That's something different. You'll have to live here a few years to understand that. That truce's just between him and me."

"Then, if I run into him—"

"No telling, like I said." Jarji frowned at the fire. "Probably he'll leave you alone, because there's no reason to do otherwise. No, wait. Come to think of it though, he won't bother you as long as you have that one there with you."

"Mikey?" Jef looked down and put an arm about the still-shivering body that huddled close to him.

"Sure. A full-grown male won't hurt any female or cub, or even a young male with his eyes still closed, like yours, there," Hillegas said. "Come to think of it, yours ought to know a full-grown one wouldn't touch him. Now, if he was another full male, it might be different. Any two males'll fight, whenever they meet, for territory. But your maolot ought to know no adult would hurt him."

"He's grown up on Earth, the last eight years," said Jef out of a dry throat. "Maybe he's forgotten, or never learned. My brother found him when he was only a few days old, beside his dead mother."

"Could be he doesn't, then," she said thoughtfully. Jef's eyes went to the crossbow at her feet. "I—don't suppose," Jef said, "you could lend me that, or one like it?" Jarji shook her head.

"These are handmade," she said. "This is the only one I've got. Stay by the fire tonight; and travel in the day. You ought to be safe enough, once any male sees you've got that young one with you."

She got abruptly to her feet, picking up the crossbow as she did so.

"You'll make Post Fifty by noon tomorrow," she said. "My territory doesn't run that way more than another five kilometers, but I'll radio ahead for you and you won't be stopped by any other uplanders. Night!"

As unexpectedly as she had arrived, she was gone into the darkness beyond the now-feeble firelight. Jef listened; but there was no sound from the woods to signal the direction in which she had left. Hastily, he built up the fire.

The flames licked high again. Once more, from farther off, came the long, droning roar of a huge, adult male maolot. Mikey nuzzled Jef and curled up once more against his legs. Jef petted him absently.

Jef woke at dawn, to find the fire out and Mikey still pressed against him.

He got stiffly to his feet, made up the fire and cooked breakfast for them both. With the new heat of the fire and his own reawakening, he began to feel more alive. A by-product of the alive feeling, however, was becoming aware of a rawness to his neck, face and the back of his hands. He had had a good tan on Earth, but apparently the golden sun of Everon was something special. He had become sunburned on the exposed parts of his skin during his hike yesterday. He looked through the small first-aid kit that was part of his pack supplies; but found nothing in there for sunburn. A little sheepishly, he ended up going back to the cooking supplies. He had some butter there in a vacuum pressure can; and he coated his areas of sunburn with that. Mikey tried to lick the butter off his hands.

As soon as possible he put out his fire and got moving. He had slept badly, waking from time to time under the sleepy impression that he had heard the roar of the adult maolot close at hand, then dropping back into sleep to dream that the great Everon predator was standing over him. But with breakfast in him, and the warmth that exercise brought to his sleep-chilled and stiffened body, the dreams of the night before began to fade.

It was a beautiful morning. The forest was open here, with tall variform western white pines shading out any undergrowth, and the yellow-brilliant shafts of sunlight came in at angles to brighten the green low carpet of the forest form of the moss-grass. It was almost like taking a stroll through a park back on Earth. The clock-birds chimed cheerfully all around them and occasionally some small scurrying native creature could be glimpsed—although not for long. They were all clearly wasting no time in getting out of the way of these two strangers. Jef wondered if it was he or Mikey—young as the maolot was—that was making them scurry for cover in such fashion.

But there was no way of answering that question. Jef consulted his mapcase from time to time; but the black line marking the route of his actual passage continued to run right beside the red line of his indicated route. Something about the area of the map displayed in the case bothered him, however; and it was not until the fourth or fifth time he consulted it that he put his finger on what was bothering him.

According to the map Post Fifty was deep in forest territory with no open country closer than twenty or twenty-five kilometers. But Jarji had said that Beau leCourboisier's game ranch, which had been close to Post Fifty, was now cleared for open range and wisent grazing. But if so, the map did not show the change.

It was hard to believe that up to twenty kilometers of what had been forest had been cleaned out completely and turned into pasture. Not that there was anything physically impossible about it, even with the sort of tools that were all a new world like Everon would have obtained with its First Mortgage. But it seemed inconceivable that woods territory would deliberately be destroyed on that scale by colonists on as young a world as this. Surely the E. Corps would get around to checking the world, sooner or later; and surely the Corps would never approve that kind of massive interference with the native ecological pattern?

The question hung in Jef's mind without an answer, nagging him until he forced himself not to think about it anymore. Happily, a glance at the mapcase told him he was now less than eight kilometers from Post Fifty. It was already mid-morning of the twenty-five-hour Everon day. He should reach the post as Jarji had said, by noon—or even before noon.

Jef gave up thinking and went back to enjoying his hike. Mikey paced beside him, apparently also relaxed and peaceful, only brushing the side of his head lightly against Jef's hip from time to time as if to reassure himself that Jef was still there.

About four kilometers from Post Fifty, something bluish-green flickered in the farther shadows under the trees ahead and Jef stopped suddenly, Mikey bumping into him. For a second Jef squinted in the direction in which the movement had been visible, without seeing any further sign of what might have caused it.

Then his vision adjusted; and he realized that he had been looking directly at what had moved without identifying it, because the colors of its sticklike body blended so well with the green of the trees and the moss-grass underfoot.

It was a so-called leaf-stalker, one of the native Everon life forms. The leaf-stalker, he remembered from his studies, was an entirely harmless, insectlike creature which lived on the tiny life infesting the moss-grass itself and the trunks of the trees. The only remarkable thing about it was its size. It stood about sixty centimeters high on its brilliantly blue-green, sticklike legs—larger than any insect on Earth. A pair of false wings half-lifted from its back, shimmering with a play of all colors of the spectrum. Now, as Jef watched, it moved both stiffly and daintily forward, probing the branches of a small bush with its dark-blue, rod-shaped head.

Ashamed of himself for his moment of alarm, Jef paused to admire the leaf-stalker. It was like some strange, impossible, but lovely creature out of a fantasy, with its soft coloring and odd movements. Then, as he watched, it suddenly stopped moving; and with the stopping almost disappeared once more into the colors of its background.

At the same time Mikey crowded suddenly out in front of him, so suddenly that Jef stumbled and almost went down. A second later the deep droning roar of a mature male maolot broke the silence. Not from the far distance, this time, but from close at hand.

Catching his balance, Jef froze—as the leaf-stalker had frozen.

The roar broke out again. The sound of it mounted, rising until the whole woods seemed to vibrate to it. It came from ahead of them, from behind them—there was no telling from which direction it came, because it seemed to echo and re-echo from every quarter.

Then, slowly it died away. But, even after the woods had gone back to silence, Jef still stood motionless where he was, stunned by the memory of that sound still in his head. Gradually his head cleared; and he remembered that Post Fifty was now certainly no more than a few kilometers distant. Once in sight of the Post...

But, as he was about to start moving again, a thought stopped him. The roar he had just heard had come from only meters away from him; but in what direction? What if the full-grown male was directly between him and the Post; and by going forward he would walk right to it?

He stood, chilled, trying to remember where the roar had seemed to come when it had first begun. But memory was no help—and then he became aware that Mikey's head was turned, facing blindly in one direction; ahead, but a little to the left of their path toward the Post.

He looked the way Mikey's muzzle was pointing, to see a close patch of trees and a clump of darker shadow—and then, as he watched, the maolot adult male walked into full view, less than thirty meters away.

Jef stopped breathing. He had read about the adults; he had heard Jarji describe one last night; and he had lived with Mikey for four years; but the actual sight of one was something for which nothing could have prepared him.

As Jarji had said, the male now facing Jef and Mikey stood almost two meters tall at the shoulder. His head, lifted on a powerful neck, looked toward Jef and Mikey from more than two meters in the air. He was in fact no taller than a good-sized Earthly horse. But the comparison to a horse did not begin to do justice to the impression of enormous physical power and majesty that radiated from him.

His shape was catlike, but his bones—and in particular the heavy head—were massive even in terms of that size. In the books Jef had read about Everon, there had been mention of an adult male maolot picking up a full-grown wisent—one of those heavy, buffalo shapes—in his mouth and carrying the wisent off the way a cat might carry a mouse. Now, face to face with this wild hunter of the Everon woods, Jef realized that there had perhaps been more understanding than he had thought in Jarji, when she had refused to supply him with a crossbow. Perhaps in her trained hands a crossbow could do some damage to such a beast as Jef now faced. Certainly if Jef had been holding it now, it would have seemed of as much use as a slingshot.

Jef's knees felt weakened. He began to breathe again, but shallowly. He was as helpless before this adult male as a small bird would have been at the paws of a house cat, back on Earth. One cold, long shiver ran through him and for the first time in his life he faced the fact that in a few seconds he could be dead.

Then the miracle happened.

Mikey had been pressing against Jef's legs in ordinary fashion. But when Jef shivered, without warning Mikey stepped away from Jef, toward the adult male. Roughly three body lengths he moved forward, placing himself between Jef and the other maolot; and from his throat came the droning, rising note of warning with which he had challenged the appearance of Jarji the night before.

That one, long moment in which Mikey faced the great, silent form of the other male, seemed to Jef to go on forever. But at last Mikey's drone died away and the two maolots confronted each other in silence.

Something happened.

Jef blinked. Neither he nor the two maolots had moved; neither Mikey nor the adult male had made any further sound; but something non-physical had taken place. Something had been accomplished. Without warning, silently as a cloud passing away from the face of the sun, the huge male turned and disappeared. All at once the place where he had stood was empty except for the sunlight and the moss-grass. Off to the right a flicker of blue and green caught Jef's eye as the leaf-stalker began to move and feed again.

Mikey turned about, came back and rubbed against Jef as if nothing had happened. The touch of the young maolot brought Jef back to full breath and movement. He let the air out of his lungs with a gasp and stared down at Mikey. "Mikey?" he said. "What happened?"

Mikey butted his head into Jef's stomach as if he had never had a thought in his life beyond play and food. Jef leaned on him for a second, letting the strong, four-footed body support him while the weakness in his knees disappeared.