Tinnerman nodded soberly. "It couldn't have slept through that. I used the spikes... I didn't catch on until I saw the way the leaves had been eaten around the head. All it had to do was open its mouth—but it let me go. Live and let live."
Abel came to his feet. "O.K., Charlie—we'll wait six hours before heading for the ship. That'll give us time to look this thing over. Don't get me wrong—I haven't made up my mind. I may still tell the captain... but not right away."
Tinnerman relaxed. "Let's see what we can learn," he said. He reassembled Abel's pack, then glanced up.
The foot was there, poised with Democlesian ponderosity fifteen feet above their heads. The eye was open, fibrils extended. The quinquepedalian had come upon them silently.
"Split!" Tinnerman yelled. The two men dived in opposite directions. Once more the ground bounced with concussion, as he raced for the nearest tree. He slid around it, safe for the moment.
A glance back showed the monster hauling its foot back into the air. Only half of Don Abel had made it to safety. Then the huge hoof hovered and dropped, and the grisly sight was gone. There was only another flat print in the earth.
Abel might have been fast enough, if he hadn't been weakened by the fight. Just as Slaker would have been more careful, had he been warned. The quinquepedalian was the agent; but Tinnerman knew that he was the cause of the two deaths.
Now Quink approached the tree, spinning in her stately dance, hoofs kissing the shadowed ground without a sound. She stood.
Why hadn't she crushed them both as they fought, oblivious to the danger above? She must have been there for several minutes, watching, listening. One gentle stomp, and vengeance would have been complete. Why had she waited?
Fair play?
Was this thing really intelligent? Did it have ethics of its own—her own?
The familiar foot came around the trunk, perceptors out. He stood calmly, knowing that he was safe from immediate harm. He stooped to pick up a handful of dirt, tossing it at the light-sensitive area. The eye folded shut immediately, letting the earth rattle over the bare hide. Fast reflexes.
Too fast. An animal of this size had to be handicapped by the distance between brain and appendages. It was manifestly impossible to have an instantaneous reflex at the end of a limb one hundred feet long. No neural track could provide anything like the speed he had witnessed.
Tinnerman moved to the other side of the trunk, as though getting ready for a dash to another tree. The foot swung around at once, intercepting him from the other direction. There was no doubt that it learned from experience, and could act on it immediately.
But how could that impulse travel from eye to brain and back again so quickly? Usually, an animal's eye was situated quite close to the brain, to cut down neural delay. Unless Quink had a brain in her foot—
The answer struck him stunningly. There was a brain in the foot. There had to be. How else could the pedal members be placed so accurately, while maintaining perfect balance? There would be a coordinating ganglion in the central body, issuing general orders concerning overall motion and order of precedence for the lifting of the feet; there could be another small brain in the head, to handle ingestion and vocalization. And each foot would make its own decisions as to exact placement and manner of descent. Seven brains in all—organized into a mighty whole.
The foot-brains could sleep when not on duty, firmly planted in the ground and covered by a thick overlap of impervious skin. They were probably not too bright as individuals—their job was specialized—but with the far more powerful central brain to back them up, any part of Quink was intelligent.
"Creature of the forest," Tinnerman said to it in wonder. "Quinquepedalian, septecerebrian—you are probably smarter than I." And certainly stronger. He thought about that, discovering a weird pleasure in the contemplation of it. All his life he had remained aloof from his fellows, searching for something he could honestly look up to. Now he had found it.
Eleven hours later, on schedule, the ship took off. It would be three, four, five years before a squat colony ship came to set up frontier operations.
Quink was stalking him with ageless determination and rapidly increasing sagacity. Already she had learned to anticipate the geometric patterns he traced. He had led her through a simple square, triangle and star, giving up each figure when she solved it and set her body to intercept him ahead. Soon she would come to the conclusion that the prey was something more than a vicious rodent. Once she realized that she was dealing with intelligence, communication could begin.
Perhaps in time she would forgive him for the death of her child, and know that vengeance had been doubly extracted already. The time might come when he could walk in the open once more and not be afraid of a foot. At night, while she slept, he was safe; but by day—
Perhaps, when the colonists came, they would be greeted by a man riding the mightiest steed of all time. Or by the quinquepedalian, carrying its pet. It did not matter who was ascendant, so long as the liaison was established.
"Creature of the forest," he said again, doubling back as he perceived her bulk in wait at an intersection of the triquetra pattern. For a moment he stood and looked at her, so vast and beautiful, spinning in the dance of his destruction. "Creature of the forest," he said, "Thou art mighty.
"Thou art mightier than I." There was an answering blast bels in magnitude, like a goddess awakening beyond the horizon.
ENCOUNTER
I had earned a total of $160 in my trial year of writing, October 1962 to October 1963. (Twenty years later, October 1982, my fantasy novel Ogre, Ogre, written with an Ogre as the hero because someone had called me an ogre at conventions—I had never even been to a convention—became my first to make the New York Times bestseller list. Thereafter I declared that to be the Month of the Ogre, Oct-ogre.) I was technically a success, but that just wasn't enough money to live on. So, reluctantly, I retired as a full time writer and went back to school to become an English teacher. What a terrible fate! But I continued to write and market stories part time, and every few months another sale would develop. "Encounter" was the fourth; the third was a collaborative story published in Analog (yes, I finally made it there!), excluded from this solo volume. I had read someone else's story that had a wall, the story didn't go the way I expected, so I wrote my own story with a wall—and a message. Yes, I'll tell you the message; I'm not shy about that sort of thing. It is that man is not made for paradise, any more than a tiger is. My stories do tend to have messages, which seems to infuriate some critics. I see nothing wrong with entertainment, escape from mundane concerns, humor—or meaning, and I don't really understand the attitude of those who feel otherwise.
In the evening of the twentieth day, Abe Sale came across the wall. On either hand a wide bare rift extended, north and south: behind him Omega Avenue retreated toward the dawn, all the way to the Atlantic. Ahead the blank concrete severed the right of way; he could not pass.
In the days of automation and leisure, it was Sale's habit to walk the endless city streets, venting in this asocial manner his seething urge for expression. His body was strong with many miles of foot labor, twenty in a day, questing through a metropolitan purgatory. Because there were half-crazed animals wandering in the plains of the empty parking acreages, he was armed; because it grew cold at night, he was clothed; because no normal person would open the ground-level apertures, he was self-reliant.