After all, what could one expect? One could not equate human ethics with the ethics of the Cytha. Might not human ethics, in certain cases, seem as weird and illogical, as infamous and ungrateful, to an alien?
He hunted for a twig and began working again to clean the rifle bore.
A crashing behind him twisted him around and he saw the Cytha. Behind the Cytha stalked a donovan.
He tossed away the twig and raised the gun.
«No,» said the Cytha sharply.
The donovan tramped purposefully forward and Duncan felt the prickling of the skin along his back. It was a frightful thing. Nothing could stand before a donovan. The screamers had turned tail and run when they had heard it a couple of miles or more away.
The donovan was named for the first known human to be killed by one.
That first was only one of many. The roll of donovan-victims ran long, and no wonder, Duncan thought. It was the closest he had ever been to one of the beasts and he felt a coldness creeping over him. It was like an elephant and a tiger and a grizzly bear wrapped in the selfsame hide. It was the most vicious fighting machine that ever had been spawned.
He lowered the rifle. There would be no point in shooting. In two quick strides, the beast could be upon him.
The donovan almost stepped on him and he flinched away. Then the great head lowered and gave the fallen tree a butt and the tree bounced for a yard or two. The donovan kept on walking. Its powerfully muscled stern moved into the brush and out of sight.
«Now we are even,» said the Cytha. «I had to get some help.»
Duncan grunted. He flexed the leg that had been trapped and he could not feel the foot. Using his rifle as a cane, he pulled himself erect. He tried putting weight on the injured foot and it screamed with pain.
He braced himself with the rifle and rotated so that he faced the Cytha.
«Thanks, pal,» he said. «I didn’t think you’d do it.»
«You will not hunt me now?»
Duncan shook his head. «I’m in no shape for hunting. I am heading home.»
«It was the vua, wasn’t it? That was why you hunted me?»
«The vua is my livelihood,» said Duncan. «I cannot let you eat it.»
The Cytha stood silently and Duncan watched it for a moment. Then he wheeled. Using the rifle for a crutch, he started hobbling away.
The Cytha hurried to catch up with him.
«Let us make a bargain, mister. I will not eat the vua and you will not hunt me. Is that fair enough?»
«That is fine with me,» said Duncan. «Let us shake on it.»
He put down a hand and the Cytha lifted up a paw. They shook, somewhat awkwardly, but very solemnly.
«Now,» the Cytha said, «I will see you home. The screamers would have you before you got out of the woods.»
They halted on a knoll. Below them lay the farm, with the vua rows straight and green in the red soil of the fields.
«You can make it from here,» the Cytha said. «I am wearing thin. It is an awful effort to keep on being smart. I want to go back to ignorance and comfort.»
«It was nice knowing you,» Duncan told it politely. «And thanks for sticking with me.»
He started down the hill, leaning heavily on the rifle-crutch. Then he frowned troubledly and turned back.
«Look,» he said, «you’ll go back to animal again. Then you will forget. One of these days, you’ll see all that nice, tender vua and—»
«Very simple,» said the Cytha. «If you find me in the vua, just begin hunting me. With you after me, I will quickly get smart and remember once again and it will be all right.»
«Sure,» agreed Duncan. «I guess that will work.»
The Cytha watched him go stumping down the hill.
Admirable, it thought. Next time I have a brood, I think I’ll raise a dozen like him.
It turned around and headed for the deeper brush.
It felt intelligence slipping from it, felt the old, uncaring comfort coming back again. But it glowed with anticipation, seethed with happiness at the big surprise it had in store for its new-found friend.
Won’t he be happy and surprised when I drop them at his door, it thought.
Will he be ever pleased!
About the Authors
CLIFFORD D. SIMAK, during his fifty-five-year career, produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writing fiction in his spare time. Simak was best known for the book City, a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and for his novel Way Station. In 1953 City was awarded the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.
DAVID W. WIXON was a close friend of Clifford D. Simak’s. As Simak’s health declined, Wixon, already familiar with science fiction publishing, began more and more to handle such things as his friend’s business correspondence and contract matters. Named literary executor of the estate after Simak’s death, Wixon began a long-term project to secure the rights to all of Simak’s stories and find a way to make them available to readers who, given the fifty-five-year span of Simak’s writing career, might never have gotten the chance to enjoy all of his short fiction. Along the way, Wixon also read the author’s surviving journals and rejected manuscripts, which made him uniquely able to provide Simak’s readers with interesting and thought-provoking commentary that sheds new light on the work and thought of a great writer.