“Shall I make a cast at it, clanfather?” a very young male asked.
“As long as it’s content to just sit there, I’m willing to let it,” Reatur said dryly. “What if you made it roar again?” He quivered at the very idea. At such close range, the noise would probably tear his eyestalks off. The youngster, who did not seem to have thought of that, lowered his spear in a hurry.
“Surround it,” Reatur said. His males moved to obey. Unfortunately, they reminded him of so many little runnerpests trying to surround a nosver male. The monster’s round feet alone were taller than any of his people.
Its size was not the only curious-no, more than curious, alien-thing about it. Every animal Reatur had ever seen was arranged the same way males and mates were, with limbs and appendages spaced evenly all around its body. The monster was different. Its front end was nothing like its back; the only pieces that matched each other were the ones that would have resulted from its being split down the middle lengthwise.
And even that limited symmetry was not absolute, for on the far side of the creature Ternat shouted, “Clanfather, a mouth is opening!” A moment later, the domain master’s eldest amended, “No, it’s doorway! Beasts are coming out of it!” Reatur saw no such doorway on his side.
“On my way!” he yelled back. Greatly daring, he ran under the monster’s belly. If it stooped, he would only be a smear on the ground, and Ternat the new domain master. It did not stoop.
Breathing hard, Reatur emerged from its shadow. Only Enoph and a couple more of the bolder males had followed him. More were taking the long way around the monster. As with those who had stayed back by the castle, Reatur did not blame them. Only when he was back in the sunlight did he let himself think on what a fool he had been.
Fortunately, he had no time to brood about it. Ternat and other males were pointing with eyestalks, arms, and weapons. came out of its belly. There was something worse to be said, after all. Enoph said it: “It’s going to come down in our fields!”
Reatur had never seen legs like the monster’s. They ended in clumps of fat, black, round things like no claws or sucker pads or hooves the domain master knew. The deliberate way the legs descended from its belly was new to him, too…, or was it? The arm that had come out of the strange thing had moved rather like that. Were they related?
He did not think the monster would be easy to kill as the strange thing had been. Too bad.
Dust and crops and a little drifted snow flew as the monster’s legs touched the ground. Behind it, crops withered, as if it voided raw heat. Perhaps it did; even from some distance away, Reatur felt a lick of warm air as it went by the castle.
The monster moved ever more slowly. At last, not far from the edge of the cleared land, it came to a stop. The noise died. Reatur waited for the monster to notice him and his males-or at least his castle, the 0nly thing nearby of a size to compare to it-and to approach. But it did nothing of the kind. It stayed where it was, as if waiting for him to come to it.
The domain master wanted to run, to hide. He saw, though, that while half the eyestalks of his males were turned on the monster, the other half pointed toward him. These were his sons and sons of sons and sons of sons of sons. They were under his power and would be as long as he lived. A third son of a fifth son of a fourth son might dream of becoming clanfather and taking a clanfather’s power one day and be safe in the dreaming, knowing it would never turn true. But Reatur knew he was as much in his males’ power as they in his. What he wanted meant nothing here. He knew what he had to do.
“Let’s go see what the cursed thing is,” he said. He hefted his spear and started walking toward the-the thing, he told himself firmly. If he did not think of it as a monster, maybe it would turn out not to be one.
Pride flowed all the way out to the tips of his fingerclaws when he saw how many of his males followed him. Against an ordinary foe-even against the Skarmer males, curse them, if Fralk was not a liar since the moment he was budded-
Reatur would have expected to find all his males coming after him. Here, though, he found he could not blame the few who hung back.
He muttered angrily as he came to the track of destruction the mon-no, the thing-had left behind. Its round feet made grooved tracks that pressed the ground down. How much did it weigh, to do that?
He looked at shriveled, sagging plant stems and muttered again. How much of his crop had he lost? Why did the monster have to choose him? Why not the Skarmer, who really deserved a monster’s attention? Thinking of it as a thing was not working. He gave up.
“Shall I make a cast at it, clanfather?” a very young male asked.
“As long as it’s content to just sit there, I’m willing to let it,” Reatur said dryly. “What if you made it roar again?” He quivered at the very idea. At such close range, the noise would probably tear his eyestalks off. The youngster, who did not seem to have thought of that, lowered his spear in a hurry.
“Surround it,” Reatur said. His males moved to obey. Unfortunately, they reminded him of so many little runnerpests trying to surround a nosver male. The monster’s round feet alone were taller than any of his people, Its size was not the only curious-no, more than curious, alien-thing about it. Every animal Reatur had ever seen was arranged the same way males and mates were, with limbs and appendages spaced evenly all around its body. The monster was different. Its front end was nothing like its back; the only pieces that matched each other were the ones that would have resulted from its being split down the middle lengthwise.
And even that limited symmetry was not absolute, for on the far side of the creature Ternat shouted, “Clanfather, a mouth is opening!” A moment later, the domain master’s eldest amended, “No, it’s doorway! Beasts are coming out of it!” Reatur saw no such doorway on his side.
“On my way!” he yelled back. Greatly daring, he ran under the monster’s belly. If it stooped, he would only be a smear on the ground, and Ternat the new domain master. It did not stoop.
Breathing hard, Reatur emerged from its shadow. Only Enoph and a couple more of the bolder males had followed him. More were taking the long way around the monster. As with those who had stayed back by the castle, Reatur did not blame them. Only when he was back in the sunlight did he let himself think on what a fool he had been.
Fortunately, he had no time to brood about it. Ternat and other males were pointing with eyestalks, arms, and weapons.
“There, clanfather! Do you see them?” Ternat cried. “Aren’t they the oddest things you ever looked at?”
“They certainly are,” the domain master agreed absently. He was too busy stating at the weird creatures to think much about what he said. The things were a mottled green and brown, all but one part of their-heads? Those were pinkish and had eyes that looked amazingly like people’s eyes, except that they were not on stalks.
One of the creatures turned so Reatur could see the other side of its head. It had no eyes there. It only had two arms, too, now that he had seen all the way around it, and, like its fellows, only two absurdly long legs. How, he wondered, did the things keep from falling over?.
“Smoke is coming out of them!” shouted the young male who had wanted to spear the giant monster out of which these smaller beasts had come. The worst of it was, the youngster was right. Smoke streamed from the openings just below the creatures’ alarming eyes.
The young male waved his spear. One of the creatures reached for something it carded near where that ridiculous pair of legs joined his body. It held the thing in a paw-no, not a paw, Reatur saw; a hand, even if it had too many fingers. And the thing that hand was holding, whatever it was, was no random stone or chunk of ice; it had the purposeful shape of something made to carry out a specific task. Which meant, or could mean-