No One frowned as he studied the figure of the swamp woman. "We mean no harm to the eggs."
Tarzaka adjusted her robe and looked at the figure standing upon the opposite side of the fire. "The eggs would strike a bargain with us." "What bargain?"
The fortune teller nodded toward the door. "Up there, in that mound behind the skeleton, is where the eggs rest. They will still be eggs when the three of us have turned to dust, and they must be cared for if they are to survive. This is Ssura's mission handed down to her by her father. But she will not live forever. She needs a child."
No One's eyebrows went up as his jaw fell down. "She what!?"
Trouble nodded. "She wants a child from you, No One. As I said: a pleasant enough task."
"Bah!" No One looked from Trouble to Tarzaka, then back at Trouble. "Why not you? You were here first."
"Through Ssura the eggs have seen your mind. They know of you. Ssura spoke to us of Little Will and your grandfather, Bullhook Willy. They want you, not me." Trouble held out his hands. "And the eggs will not teach us unless you agree."
No One snorted. "Then they will not teach us! I will have lost nothing but time. There are other ways to kill bulls. You two have this great desire to learn from the eggs—"
Tarzaka held up her hand. "As do you."
"—let Trouble perform this service!" He pushed himself to his feet. "I am leaving!" As he approached the door of the shack, the jungle around them wailed with cries, screams, and growls. "By damn, does she control the creatures of the swamp?"
Trouble nodded. "She cannot get through to my mind when it is cloaked, but this clearing is guarded by uncounted numbers of those swamp monsters. They reach me with a most impressive argument." The magician looked at Ssura. "I do not doubt that she will kill us if you do not give her what she wants."
No One looked out of the door and saw Ssura's arms rise. The howling from the jungle ceased. He stared at the swamp woman. "How long?"
Tarzaka spoke softly. "Until a live child is born."
No One turned slowly toward his two companions, his head hung down. "A year. Almost an entire year." He turned and looked out of the door, toward the figure seated before the mound. "The skeleton."
Tarzaka's voice trembled. "It is Waco. She said he once told her that he would never rest until there was a child to carry on the watch after her. She seems to have taken her father's words quite literally."
Trouble pushed himself to his feet and placed a gentle hand upon No One's shoulder. "No One, look at her. She has beauty enough to shame a ballet girl. Besides, we haven't any choice. It's that or all of us either die or remain prisoners the rest of our lives."
No One moved slowly from beneath Trouble's hand. This time the jungle did not scream. Trouble and Tarzaka watched as No One came abreast of the fire. The swamp woman screamed, laughed hysterically, then ran toward the skeleton. No One looked back at his two companions briefly, then turned and continued up the incline until he was swallowed by the dark.
Tarzaka faced Trouble. "Do you think he will be all right?"
Trouble shook his head and placed his arm around the fortune teller's shoulders. "I do not know. What I do know is that the swamp woman is crazier than Arnheim's cuckoo clock."
Again he shook his head. "I only hope that No One can, er, perform adequately under the current circumstances."
Tarzaka looked past the fire into the darkness. "Could you?" Trouble snorted. "No. That lady scares the salt from me. She is straight from the white rubber lot."
TWENTY-NINE
As he entered the darkness, suddenly No One could see nothing. The dim reflection from Waco's laughing skull was gone, as were the stars. He tried to turn and see the fire, but he could not move. "Ssura!" The echoes returned with ten times the strength of his call. But the echoes were in his mind, not against his ears. "Ssura!"
Laughter. Loud, raucous, laughter. The ground fell away from beneath his feet, and he turned and tumbled in the blackness, the laughter growing louder. He held his hands to his ears, but could not feel his hands touch his head. Then, first his right leg, his nose, his left eye, were assaulted with stabbing pains, and from there every scrap of his body was filled with agony. No One screamed, flailing his non-existent arms and legs at the nothingness.
"Mother! Help me, Mother!"
Knives of searing white light split the dark, and he felt himself being sucked into a mire of tentacled, slime-covered horror. He screamed and screamed until the blackness covered his mind.
Little Will sat up on her sleeping cushions, torn from her sleep by the screams in her head. "Johnjay? Johnjay, where are you?"
She drove everything from her mind, listening for her son's thoughts. Minutes later, her shoulders slumped, and she sighed. Nothing but a stronger version of the same nightmare? She shook her head.
She pushed herself up from the floor cushions and walked to her window. That evening there had been a cold wetness in the air, and the window was shut. She propped it open, looked into the darkness toward the kraal, and listened. On the still air she could hear distant yells and laughter coming from the direction of the tavern. From the kraal came a snort and the sound of heavy footsteps.
"Reg!"
She turned, grabbed her bullhook, and rushed from her room, through the eating room, out into the night. As she came to the fence, she stopped, then listened to her mind as she spread a net of thought over the kraal. There could be nothing inside the net, and she would have felt it if something was attacking from outside. "Johnjay? Are you here, Johnjay?"
She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue as a sickness filled her stomach. Looking into the darkness of the kraal, she wondered aloud. "Have you already done your terrible deed, Johnjay? Have you killed the last bull?"
Little Will climbed the fence and came down inside. "Reg? Reg? Come, Reg!"
She heard a snort, then the pachyderm's great feet thundering against the lowgrass. In the dimness of the cloud-shrouded night, she saw the shadow of a mountain coming at her. "Reg—"
First she felt the slam of a great weight against her face and chest; an instant later, her upper left arm being crushed, thrust into the soil by a foot weighted with six tons of stampeding flesh.
... Bullhook Willy had told her the story of Black Diamond when she was only eight. It was an old, old story, and only one of a thousand such stories that had the same moraclass="underline" bulls only mind one bullhand at a time. Curley Prichett used to be Black Diamond's bullhand, years before; but at the stand in Corsicana, Texas, Black Diamond's handler was Jack O'Grady. Curley had made his home in Corsicana, and he had asked Jack O'Grady if he could lead Diamond from the loading runs to the lot. He wanted to impress his neighbors.
On the way to the lot, the street lined with spectators, Curley assumed Diamond knew him and would obey him. That was why, when the baggage nags held up everything, Curley gave the spectator, Eva Donohoe, permission to pet Black Diamond. But Curley used to be Diamond's bullhand, and wasn't any longer. Not the way Diamond saw it. Diamond caught Curley with one of his tusks and flung the retired bullhand over the nearest car. Then Diamond knocked Eva Donohoe to the sidewalk and ran his tusks through her body...
All of the bullhands of Miira, in turn, had been handling Reg. How else were they to maintain their skills? How else were their children to learn them? But bulls only mind one bullhand at a time. Little Will used to be Reg's handler, but no longer. Reg had been under the hooks of hundreds of different bullhands, and was confused, angry, desperate, old. Little Will understood this as her mind went blank.