Limits (36 page)

“Well?”

“They drink water and milk. They’ve never been seen eating. They don’t
buy
food—”

“Pets?”

“—
Or
pets, or livestock. I thought of that—”

“Missing Persons reports?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Rick!
No, this is the
only
way they eat. It’s not a hunt so much as a formal dinner party. The rules of etiquette are likely to be rigid.”

Rigid, hell.
I’d watched them tearing live animals apart.

Water gurgled ahead. The artificial stream ran everywhere. “I never wondered about the canteen,” I said.
“Why a canteen?”

B-beam yelped softly. A Folk squeaked back. Yelp, and squeak, and B-beam tried to suppress a laugh. “You must have talked about drinking wine with meals.”

“I did. Is there supposed to be
wine
in this thing?”

B-beam grinned.
Then lost the grin.
“The canteen isn’t for the hunt, it’s for afterward. What about the knife and beamer?”

“Oh, come on, the Folk
gave
me…uh.” Butterflies began breeding in my stomach. Humans cook their food. Sushi and Sashimi and Beef Tartar are exceptions. I’d said so, that night. “The beamer’s for cooking. If I use it to kill the prey…we’ll be disgraced?”

“I’m not sure I want to come right out and ask. Let’s see…”

The high-pitched squeaking went on for some time. B-beam was trying to skirt the edges of the subject. The butterflies in my belly were turning carnivorous. Presently he whispered, “Yup. Knife too. Your teeth and nails are visibly inadequate for carving.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“The later you back out, the worse it’ll be. Do it
now
if—”

Two melks were grazing beyond a rise of ground. I touched B-beam’s shoulder and we sank to our bellies.

The melks were really too big. They’d weigh about what I did: a hundred and eighty pounds. I’d be better off chasing a bird.
Better yet, a boar-pig.

Then again, these
were
meat animals, born to lose. And we’d need four or five birds for this crowd. I’d be totally winded long before we finished. B-beam’s exercise program had given me a good grasp of my limits…not to mention a raging hunger.

The purpose of this game was to make humans—me—look good. Wasn’t it? Anyway, there wasn’t a bird or a pig in sight.

We crept through the fat grass until we had a clear view. That top-heavy array of horns would make a handle. If I could get hold of the horns, I could break the melk’s long, slender neck.

The thought made me queasy.

“The smaller one,” I whispered. B-beam nodded. He yelped softly, and got answers. The Folk flowed away through the fat grass. I crept toward the
melks on hands and toes.

Three Folk stood up and shrieked.

The melks shrieked too, and tried to escape. Two more Folk stood up in front of the smaller one. I stayed down, scrambling through the grass stalks, trying to get ahead of it.

It came straight at me.
And now I must murder you
.

I lunged to the attack. It spun about. A hoof caught my thigh and I grunted in pain. The melk leapt away,
then
froze as B-beam dashed in front of it waving his arms. I threw myself at its neck. It wheeled and the cage of horns slammed into me and knocked me on my ass. It ran over me and away.

I was curled around my belly, trying to remember how to breathe. B-beam helped me to my feet. It was the last place I wanted to be. “Are you all right?”

I wheezed, “Hoof.
Stomach.”

“Can you move?”

“Nooo!
Minute.
Try again.”

My breath came back. I walked around in a circle. The Folk were watching me. I straightened up. I jogged. Not good, but I could move. I took off the loop of line that held canteen and beamer and knife, and handed them to B-beam. “Hold these.”

“I’m afraid they may be the mark of the leader.”

“Bullshit. Folk don’t carry anything. Hold ’em so I can fight.” I wanted to be rid of the beamer. It was too tempting.

We’d alerted the prey in this area. I took us along the edge of the forest, where the fat grass thinned out and it was easier to move. We saw nothing for almost an hour.

I saw no birds, no stilts,
no
boar-pigs. What I finally did see was four more melks drinking from the stream. It was a situation very like the first I’d seen on film.

I’d already proved that a melk was more than my equal. My last-second qualms had slowed me not at all. I’d been beaten because my teeth and claws were inadequate; because I was not a wolf, not a lion, not a Folk.

I crouched below the level of the fat grass, studying them. The Folk studied me. B-beam was at my side, whispering, “We’re in no hurry. We’ve
got hours yet. Do you think you can handle a boar-pig?”

“If I could find one I might catch it. But how do I kill it?
With my teeth?”

The Folk watched. What did they expect of me?

Suddenly I knew.

“Tell them I’ll be in the woods.” I pointed. “Just in there. Pick a melk and run it toward me.” I turned and moved into the woods, low to the ground. When I looked back everyone was gone.

These trees had to be from the Folk world. They bent to an invisible hurricane. They bent in various directions, because the Mojave
wasn’t
giving them the right signals. The trunks had a teardrop-shaped cross section for low wind resistance. Maybe the Folk world was tidally locked, with a wind that came always from one direction…

I dared not go too far for what I needed. The leafy tops of the trees were just in reach, and I plunged my hands in and felt around. The trunk was straight and solid; the branches were no thicker than my big toe, and all leaves. I tried to rip a branch loose anyway. It was too strong, and I didn’t have the leverage.

Through the bent trunks I watched melks scattering in panic. But one dashed back and forth, and found
black death
popping up wherever it looked.

There was fallen stuff on the ground, but no fallen branches. To my right, a glimpse of white—

The melk was running toward the wood.

I ran deeper among the trees. White: bones in a neat pile.
Melk bones.
I swept a hand through to scatter them. Damn! The leg bones had all been split. What now?

The skull was split too, hanging together by the intertwined horns. I stamped on the horns. They shattered. I picked up a massive half-skull with half a meter of broken horn for a handle.

The melk veered just short of the woods. I sprinted in pursuit. Beyond, B-beam half-stood, his eyes horrified. He shouted, “Rick! No!”

I didn’t have time for him. The melk raced away, and nothing popping up in its face was going to stop it now. I was gaining…it was fast…too damn fast…I swung the skull at a flashing hoof, and connected.
Again.
Throwing it off, slowing it just enough.
The half-skull and part-horn made a good bludgeon. I smacked a knee, and it wheeled in rage and caught me across the
face and chest with its horns.

I dropped on my back. I got in one grazing blow across the neck as it was turning away, and then it was running and I rolled to my feet and chased it again. There was a feathery feel to my run. My lungs and legs thought I was dying. But the melk shook its head as it ran, and I caught up far enough to swing at its hooves.

This time it didn’t turn to attack. Running with something whacking at its feet, it just gradually lost ground. I delivered a two-handed blow to the base of its neck. Swung again and lost my balance and tumbled, caught the roll on my shoulder, had to go back for the skull. Then I ran, floating, r
e
covering lost ground, and suddenly realized that the grass was stirring all around me. I was surrounded by the black shadows of the Folk.

I caught up.

A swing at the head only got the horns. I hammered at the neck, just behind the head. It tumbled, and tried to get to its feet, and I beat it until it fell over. I used the skull like an ax…murdering it…and suddenly black bodies flowed out of the fat grass and tore at the melk. B-beam got a good grip on the horns and snapped the neck.

I sat down.

He handed me the line: knife, beamer,
canteen
. He was almost as winded as I was. He whispered, “Damn fool, you weren’t—”

“Wrong.” I didn’t have breath for more. I drank from my canteen, paused to gasp,
drank
again. Then I turned the beamer on a meaty thigh. The Folk must have been waiting for me to make my choice. They now attacked the forequarters.

I crouched, panting, holding the beamer on the meat until it sizzled, until it smoked, until the smell of it told my belly it was ready.

The heaving of my chest had eased. I handed the knife to B-beam. “Carve us some of that. Eat as much as you can.
Courtesy to our hosts.”

He did. He gave me a chunk that I needed both hands to hold. It was too hot; I had to juggle it. B-beam said, “You used a weapon.”

“I used a club,” I said. I bit into the meat. Ecstasy! The famine was over. I hadn’t cooked it enough, and so what? I swallowed enough to clear my mouth and said, “Humans don’t use teeth and claws. The Folk know that. They wanted to see us in action.
My
evolution includes a club.”

I was tending bar alone that night. The chirpsithra interstellar liner had left Earth four days earlier, taking most of my customers. The Draco Tavern was nearly empty.

The man at the bar was drinking gin and tonic. Two glig—grey and compact beings, wearing furs in three tones of green—were at a table with a chirpsithra guide. They drank vodka and consomme, no ice, no flavorings. Four farsilshree had their bulky, heavy environment tanks crowded around a bigger table. They smoked smoldering yellow paste through tubes. Every so often I got them another jar of paste.

The man was talkative. I got the idea he was trying to interview the bartender and owner of Earth’s foremost multi-species tavern.

“Hey, not me,” he protested. “I’m not a reporter. I’m Greg Noyes, with the
Scientific American
television show.”

“Didn’t I see you trying to interview the glig, earlier tonight?”

“Guilty. We’re doing a show on the formation of life on Earth. I thought maybe I could check a few things. The
gligstith(
click)optok—” He said that slowly, but got it right. “—have
their own
little empire out there, don’t they?
Earthlike worlds, a couple of hundred.
They must know quite a lot about how a world forms an oxygenating atmosphere.” He was careful with those po
l
ysyllabic words. Not quite sober, then.

“That doesn’t mean they want to waste an evening lecturing the natives.”

He nodded. “They didn’t know anyway.
Architects on vacation.
They got me talking about my home life. I don’t know how they managed that.” He pushed his drink away. “I’d better switch to espresso. Why would a thing that
shape
be interested in my sex life? And they kept asking me about territorial imperatives—” He stopped,
then
turned to see what I was staring at.

Three chirpsithra were just coming in. One was in a floating couch with life support equipment attached.

“I thought they all looked alike,” he said.

I said, “I’ve had chirpsithra in here for close to thirty years, but I can’t tell them apart. They’re all perfect physical specimens, after all, by their own standards. I never saw one like
that
.”

I gave him his espresso, then put three sparkers on a tray and went to the
chirpsithra table.

Two were exactly like any other chirpsithra: eleven feet tall, dressed in pouched belts and their own salmon-colored exoskeletons, and very much at their ease. The chirps claim to have settled the entire galaxy long ago—meaning the useful planets, the tidally locked oxygen worlds that happen to circle close around cool red-dwarf suns—and they act like the reigning queens of wherever they happen to be. But the two seemed to defer to the third. She was a foot shorter than they were. Her exoskeleton was as clearly artificial as dentures: alloplastic bone worn on the outside. Tubes ran under the edges from the equipment in her floating couch. Her skin between the plates was more gray than red. Her head turned slowly as I came up. She studied me, bright-eyed with interest.

I asked, “Sparkers?” as if chirpsithra ever ordered anything else.

One of the others said, “Yes. Serve the ethanol mix of your choice to yourself and the other native. Will you join us?”