He would leave his cover with total stealth, he decided, as soon as the other bounties’ breathing had grown slow and regular. Then he would advance carefully but not trust to total soundlessness in crossing those final feet. Yes, that seemed most prudent. He felt that she would be as alert as one of the People, and the tiniest sound would be as sufficient to galvanize her to action as it would be to himself. He would have to cover that final distance with a great leap.
A half-hour, perhaps, went by. The three men seemed to be sleeping. Big Betsy was sitting very still, staring into the flames. He continued to wait. The sleepers should be easy for the others to deal with. But—best not to take any chances.
The night wore on. It became obvious that the others were deep into sleep. His clansmen would be growing restless, might think he was afraid of the human woman. Was he? She was the biggest woman he had ever seen. He fingered his scar. Then he parted the fronds before him and moved slowly forward.
He placed each foot with the utmost precision and shifted his weight carefully. He controlled his breathing. He could not control his smell, however.
He heard her sniff, once. Then her right hand flashed out toward the weapons. He leaped immediately, his battle cry rising to his lips.
But Big Betsy had thrown herself to the side and rolled away, moving with surprising speed for one of her bulk, uttering a shout of warning to the others as she did so. Sayjak missed his target—her back—but a quick movement of his long arm was successful in knocking the half-clasped rifle from her hand. He lunged at her again, but she rolled backwards over a shoulder, removing herself from his path and coming up onto her feet, facing him.
As he began to reach for her, she kicked him twice in the stomach, ducked beneath his sweeping arm, and drove a heavy fist against the right side of his rib cage. While any of these blows would have devastated a man, Sayjak was only momentarily shaken by them, and, snarling, he made for her again. She tripped him as he passed, and he felt her ham-like fist fall upon the massive muscles at the back of his neck.
Shaking his head, he turned toward her again. About him now rose cries and growls as his clansmen fell upon the recent sleepers, along with the sounds of their conflict, which included the breaking of bones. Big Betsy kicked him again. He bore it stoically and advanced upon her, moving more deliberately now, having learned that his rushing attacks were less than effective.
She retreated from him, striking as she went and keeping her kicks low, for she had seen the enormous speed of his hands and arms and feared his catching hold of her leg should she kick too high. She worried him about the shins, knees, and thighs, but he plodded toward her, ignoring these blows, his arms swinging low before him. He found himself wishing she were one of the People as he considered what a fine mate she would make.
He struck suddenly with a blinding movement of his left arm. While she managed to roll with it, her balance was destroyed. She stumbled to the side. He was upon her in an instant, seeking to immobilize her. Even then, before he succeeded, she struck his chin with the heel of her hand, clawed at his eyes, aimed brief blows at his throat. Finally, his left arm about her back, crushing her right arm to her side, he caught hold of her left elbow with that hand and drew it against her left side with such force that he heard cracking sounds from within her chest.
She grunted once, perhaps too compressed to cry out, and suddenly she spat in his face. He wondered at the significance of this as he reached out and caught hold of her head with his massive right hand. Behind him, the sounds of struggling had ceased and there came only a few death moans now. He turned her head to her left as far as it would normally go. Then, slowly, he continued to turn it. Her neck made cracking sounds, and he felt spasms within her body. He squeezed her more tightly and continued to turn her head. There came a final snap, followed by a brief convulsion. Then she fell limp within his grasp. He lowered her to the ground and stared.
Then he turned, looking to where the others stood beside the other bodies. They were watching him. Had he promised aloud that he would have her? He tried to remember. He looked at her again. No, he hadn’t, he suddenly recalled, and he felt better. He would eat her liver and heart, instead, he decided, because she had fought well. He sought her machete, found it.
Then he grinned. He would try it out on the others. He chose one sprawled prone, raised the blade, swung it like a stick. It passed easily through the neck and the head rolled away on a trail of gore. Delighted, he moved to the next and did it again. When he had done them all, lie sat them with their backs against tree trunks and placed their heads in their laps, hands arranged to hold them lightly on either side.
Then he turned to Betsy. He used the machete carefully in her case, and when he had done he arranged her garments to cover the wound.
He left her seated beside the others. But she did not hold her head in her lap, for he had taken it with him, along with the machete.
Dubhe—bored, impulsive, lonely—was in a twilit valley to the west of Deep Fields, beside an acid stream, engaged in necrophilia with the significant remains of a blond baboon, when he heard the sound unlike any sound he had ever heard before. Startled, he released her, and her lower anatomy pranced away into the stream, to be reduced in stature with every step, until finally naught remained but a pungent memory. He threw his head back and barked in frustration. The intruding sound continued, so strange. It was—patterned. It was unlike the intermittent burst which came and went as a by-product of entropy doing its stuff.
He climbed out of the valley. East, it seemed. Something interesting going on there. The sounds did not let up. He struck a course in that direction. A piece of something shiny and mechanical drifted by and he mounted it and rode it until right before it crashed, jumping off at the last moment. Then he hurried on afoot, through the always-twilight, spotted with occasional flares and will-o’-the-wisps from the always-decomposing, leaping chasms, scrambling up hillsides and down their farther slopes.
“What is it, Dubhe? Whither fare you?” came a satiny voice from a hole that he passed.
He paused and the snake slithered forth, long, shining like beaten copper.
“I’m following that peculiar sound, Phecda.”
“I feel its vibrations, also,” the snake replied, silvery tongue darting. “So you do not know what it is?”
“Only its direction.”
“I will join you then, for I, too, am curious.”
“So let us go,” Dubhe responded, and he set off once more.
He did not speak again for some time, though he occasionally caught the glitter of Phecda’s scales at either side, and sometimes before him. They hurried on, the sounds louder now—voices and instruments distinguishable.
Mounting a hillside, they halted. To the east, they beheld the figure of a man, walking, a kind of light about him. What gate, track, or trail might touch upon him as he moved here?
The sounds came from the tall, dark-haired man, or from something he bore with him. He moved slowly, with a deliberation that implied a definite course he followed. It led him down his hillside and into a long valley.
Dubhe hesitated to move toward him and so be seen. He elected, rather, to follow, and so let the man pass below before he moved again. Phecda also waited, apparently of the same mind.
The sounds danced through the air in the man’s wake, and Dubhe found them pleasantly disturbing. “Is there a word,” he asked Phecda, “for when the noise is good?”
And Phecda, who spent her time passing through mounds and around them and going up and down the valleys, digesting bits of wisdom before they might decay, replied, “Music. It is called music. It is a thing very difficult to manifest here. Perhaps that is why the master likes it so—for its rarity. More likely, though, he loves it for itself—as I see that this is easy to do.”