Bestiary! (17 page)

"That's decent of you, but I'm full up," said Iratzabal. "The boys found a couple of dead ... uh, buffalo, after the battle, and we had a fine barbecue."

Kynthides winced. Another yoke of draft oxen gone! Well, Corn Mother willing, the war would be settled soon, It might even be tonight. "Won't you, er ... sit? Lie down? Er, make yourself comfortable."

Iratzabal lowered himself to the ground with his feet under him, and Kynthides sank gratefully into a leather-backed chair. He had been afraid the discussion would be conducted standing up.

"I got to admit you gave us a good fight today, for all you're such lightweights," the centaur said. "You generally do. If we don't get things settled somehow, we could go on like this till we've wiped each other out."

"We realize that too," said the man. "I've been asked by the heads of every village in Tartessos, not to mention communities all the way back to Thrace, to make some reasonable settlement with you. Can you speak for centaurs in those areas?"

"More or less." He swished his tail across the bandaged fetlock, and flies scattered. "I run most of the territory from here up through Goikokoa Etchea—what men call Pyrene's Mountains—and across to the Inland Sea. Half a dozen tribes besides mine hunt through here, but they stand aside for
us.
We could lick any two of them with our eyes shut. Now, you take an outfit like the Acroceraunians —I don't run them, but they've heard of me, and I can tell them to knuckle under or face my boys
and
yours. But that shouldn't be necessary. I'm going to get them a good cut."

"Well, remember that if the communities don't like promises I make in their names, they won't honor them," said the man. He slid his fingers through the combed curls of his dark-brown beard and wished he could ignore the centaur's odor. The fellow smelled like a saddle-blanket. If he didn't want to wash, he could at least use perfume. "First, we ought to consider the reasons for this war, and after that ways to settle the dispute."

"The way I see it," the centaur began, "is, you folks want to pin down the corners of a piece of country and sit on it. We don't understand ground belonging to somebody."

"It
began,"
Kynthides said stiffly, "with that riot at the wedding."

"That was just what set things off," said Iratzabal. "There'd been a lot of small trouble before then. I remember how I was running down a four-pointer through an oak wood one rainy day, with my nose full of the way things smell when they're wet and my mind on haunch of venison. The next thing I knew I was in a clearing planted with one of those eating grasses, twenty pounds of mud on each hoof and a pack of tame wolves worrying my hocks. I had to kill two or three of them before I got away, and by then there were men throwing spears and shouting 'Out! Out!' in what they thought was Eskuara."

"We have to keep watchdogs and arm the field hands, or we wouldn't have a stalk of grain standing at harvest time!"

"Take it easy. I was just telling you, the war isn't over a little thing like some drunks breaking up a wedding. Nor they wouldn't have, if the wine hadn't been where they could get at it. There's blame on both sides."

The man half rose at this, but caught himself. The idea was to stop the war, not set it off afresh. "At any rate, it seems we can't get along with each other. Men and centaurs don't mix well."

"We look at things different ways, said Iratzabal. "You see a piece of open country, and all you can think of is planting a crop on it. We think of deer grazing it, or rabbit and pheasant nesting. Field-planting ruins the game in a district."

"Can't you hunt away from farm districts?" asked Kynthides. "We have our families to support, little babies and old people. There are too many of us to let the crops go and live by hunting, even if there were as much game as the land could support."

"Where can we hunt?" shrugged the centaur. "Whenever we come through one of our regular districts, we find more valleys under plow than last time, more trees cut and the fields higher up the slope. Even in Goikokoa Etchea, what's as much my tribe's home as a place can be, little fields are showing up." A swirl of lamp smoke veered toward him, and he sniffed it contemptuously. "Sheep fat! The herds I find aren't
deer
any more, they're sheep, with a boy pi-pipping away on a whistle—and dogs again."

"If you'd pick out your territory and stay on it, then no farmers would come in," said Kynthides. "It's contrary to our nature to leave land unused because somebody plans to hunt through it next autumn."

"But, big as Goikokoa Etchea is, it won't begin to feed us year round! We've got to have ten times as much, a hundred times if you're talking of Scythia and Illyria and all."

"I live in Thessaly myself," Kynthides pointed out. "I have to think of Illyria. What we men really want is to see all you centaurs completely out of Europe, resettled in Asia or the like. Couldn't you all move out of Sarmatia and the lands to the east? Nobody lives there. It's all empty steppes."

"Sarmatia! Maybe it looks empty to a farmer, but I've heard from the boys in Scythia. The place is filling up with Achaians, six feet tall, each with twenty horses big enough to eat either one of us for breakfast, and they can ride those horses all night and fight all day. By Jainco, I'm keeping away from them."

"Well, there's hardly anybody in Africa. Why don't you go there?" the man suggested.

"If there was any way of us all getting there—" "Certainly there is! We have ships. It would take a couple of years to send you all, but—"

"If
we could get there, we wouldn't like it at all. That's no kind of country for a centaur. Hot, dry, game few and far between—no thanks. But you're willing to ship us all to some other place?"

"Any place! That is, within reason. Name it."

"Just before war broke out in earnest, I got chummy with a lad who'd been on one of those exploring voyages you folks go in for. He said he'd been to a place that was full of game of all kinds, and even had the right kind of toadstools."

"Toadstools? To make poison with?" cried Kynthides, his hand twitching toward the neatly bandaged spear-jab on his side.

"Poison!"
Iratzabal ducked his head and laughed into
his heavy sorrel beard. "That's a good one, poison from toadstools! No, to eat. Get a glow on at the Moon Dances—same way you people do with wine. Though I can't see why you use stuff that leaves you so sick the next day."

"Once you've learned your capacity, you needn't have a hangover," Kynthides said with a feeling of superiority. "But this place you're talking of—"

"Well, my pal said it wasn't much use to men, but centaurs would like it. Lots of mountains, all full of litle tilted meadows, but no flat country to speak of. Not good to plow up and sow with barley or what-not. Why not turn that over to us, since you can't send any big colonies there anyway?"

"Wait a minute. Are you talking about Kypros' last expedition?"

"That's the one my pal sailed under," nodded Iratzabal.

"No, by the Corn Mother! How can I turn that place over to you? We've barely had a look at it ourselves. There may be tin and amber to rival Thule, or pearls, or sea-purple. We have simply no idea of what we'd be giving you."

"And there may be no riches at all. Did this guy Kypros say he'd seen any tin or pearls? If he did, he didn't tell a soul of his crew. And I'm telling you, if we don't go there we don't go anyplace. I can start the war again with two words."

The man sprang to his feet, white-lipped. "Then start the war again! We may not have been winning, but by the Mother, we weren't losing!"

Iratzabal heaved himself upright. "You can hold out as long as we give you pitched battles. But wait till we turn to raiding! You'll have fields trampled every night, and snipers chipping at you every day. You won't dare go within bowshot of the woods. We'll chivy your herds through your crops till they've run all their fat off and there's not a blade still standing. And you'll get no harvest in, above what you grab off the stem and eat running. How are the granaries, Kynthides? Will there be any
seed
corn left by spring?"

The man dropped into his chair and took his head in trembling hands. "You've got us where we hurt. We can't survive that kind of warfare. But how can I promise land that isn't mine? It belongs to Kypros' backers, if anyone."

"Pay them off in the grain that won't be spoiled. Fix up the details any way it suits you. I'm not trying to make it hard on you—we can kick through with a reasonable number of pelts and such to even the bargain."

He looked up. "All right, Iratzabal," he said wearily. "You can
have
Atlantis."

The Woman Who Loved
The Centaur Pholus

by

Gene Wolfe

ANDERSON'S TELEPHONE RANG, and of course it was Janet. Anderson swung his feet over the side of the bed before he hung up, then looked at his watch. Four twenty A.M. The moonlight on the melting snow outside sent a counterfeit dawn to his windows.

He switched on the reading light and found his slippers, then kicked them off again. There would not be time for slippers. The little water-horse that Dumont—Dumont would surely be there too—had made for him lifted its head and foaming mane above the rim of its aquarium and neighed, a sound so high pitched it might have been the chirping of a bird.

So like they were, no mortal

Might one from the other know; White as snow their armor was,

Their steeds were white as snow. Never on earthly anvil

Did such rare armor gleam,
And never did such gallant steeds

Drink from an earthly stream.

Who had written that? Anderson couldn't remember. Before he had gone to bed he had filled the stainless- steel thermos with scalding coffee, telling himself he would not need it, that he would drink it with breakfast so as not to waste it. Wool shirt with lumberjack checks, wool hunting pants, thick socks, rubber-bottomed hunting boots, down-filled vest, parka, Navy watch cap. Gloves and compass in the parka's pockets? Yes. His sign was already in the car, and the chains were on. It started without trouble; he roared out of the driveway and down the silent street. Coming, Janet. Coming, Pholus, or whoever you are. Damn.

When winter was beginning, he had gone out in the suit he wore on campus, with the same overcoat and hat. He had learned better, floundering through the snow long before machinegun slugs had ripped the weak and frightened siren, the bird-woman whose scattered feathers he had helped Dumont gather when the soldiers were gone. There was a mail-order company that sold all sorts of cold-weather gear. Their prices were high, but the quality was excellent. Never on earthly anvil ... How did the rest go? Something, something, something ..

O'er the green waves which gently bend and swell, Fair Amphitrite steers her silver shell;

Her playful dolphins stretch the silken rein, Hear her sweet voice, and glide along the main.

No, that wasn't it, that was Darwin, the father (or was it the grandfather?) of Dumont's Darwin, the Darwin of the
Beagle.
Anderson swung onto the Interstate. For mile after mile, the red taillights of the cars in front of him looked like the red eyes of beasts, prowling the snow by night.

At last, just to hear a voice, Anderson said aloud, "They sell everything but Odysseus's wax. But then, I don't need wax." He had been thinking of the man-headed bull, Nin, of Assyria; that too had been killed, and the memory of its wings suggested the siren again. As if the CB had heard him and knew his loneliness, it murmured, "Breaker one one. This is Sombelené for Peirithous. Come in, Peirithous."

"I'm here, Sombelené," Anderson answered. He did not know where Janet had discovered that name. It had not been in any of the references he had checked.

"Go past the sign for the Dells, Peirithous. After a quarter mile you'll see an unmarked road on your left. We're about three miles farther on."

"Ten-four and out," Anderson said. He hated the pseudonyms, and he was certain the Army knew who they were anyway.

As if to confirm it, the threshing sound of a helicopter came from above, louder and louder, then louder still. It passed over the car at treetop level going ninety at least and disappeared beyond the crest of a hill.

"Breaker one one for Sombeleni . Chopper on the way."

"Ten-four, Peirithous."

So Janet knew, and whoever was with her knew. And of course the soldiers knew, in their helicopter.

"All hail, beloved birds," he cried,
"My comrades on the ocean tide."

Anderson passed a billboard showing the little sternwheeler
Apollo 2
and swerved onto the next unmarked road. There were fresh tire tracks in the snow, and he began automatically to look to left and right, though he knew how unlikely it was that he would see anything from the road. Yet he might. How did it go?

Will thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take,

The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake... .

The sun was peeping over the snow-clad hills now, and inexplicably Anderson felt his spirits rise. He was going to a fight, and he would be fighting for the only thing he knew that was really worth fighting for. For once he could not recall a quotation, but he remembered the sense of it, and not just with his mind but in his feet and hands, belly and heart and brain. The second best thing was to fight and win. But the first best thing was to fight the fight worth fighting. Where would he be, if not here?

He topped the hill at better than eighty and saw the cars and signs and milling people. The helicopter had set down in a field just behind a wood of birch, and there were two

olive-drab Army trucks. He hit the brakes and went into a long skid, steering into it just the way that racing driver had advised on television, still utterly unafraid but feeling. he must somehow be drunk. The car turned ninety degrees and skidded to a stop less than a dozen feet from the nearest truck.

Anderson jumped out and drew his sign from the back seat as some earlier Anderson might have drawn a sword.