* * * *
Derr tapped the native again. “How much farther?”
The native's horny shoulders bobbed. “Ten, ‘leven k'lometer, shasir Derr. Big ristable today.”
Derr pulled a black cigar from the cartridge ring, one of ten in a broken row across his jacket. He lit it. Drew deeply. He never kept extra cartridges in the rings; if he hadn't bagged his quarry by the time the stet-rifle was empty, Derr felt he deserved to die. That was his philosophy. He drew down on the black cigar, let a heavy cloud of smoke billow up over his head.
The ancient water-piston half-track rolled steadily out into the grasslands. They passed a pile of rubble; Derr recognized it as another of the lost cities. The faintly pink columns rose spiraling, then broke with ragged abruptness. Strangely-pyramidal structures split down the middle. Carved figures with smashed noses, broken arms, shattered forms ... forms which could not be understood ... humanoid or something else?
As they came abreast of the ruined city with huge clumps of grass growing up in its middle, Derr crossed his legs in the back seat, and he said, “Those cities, who made them?”
The native shrugged. “Don't know. Ristable.”
Ristable again.
The half-track passed walking natives, heading toward a plume of gray smoke that twisted out of the grasslands ahead. Eventually, they drew up on the edge of a widely-cleared dirt area. Surrounded by the waist-high russet grass on all sides, it was like a bald spot on someone's head. The dirt was packed solid and hard with the footprints of a hundred thousand bare feet. The smoke rose from a large bonfire used to summon the natives. Even as Derr watched, the crowd that had already gathered swelled at the edges.
Strangely enough, a path quite wide and straight leading out to the grasslands was left in the circle of natives.
“What's that?” Derr asked the driver, motioning to the circle, to the path, to the Ristabites watching at nothing. The native motioned him to silence and Derr realized, for the first time, that there wasn't a sound in the crowd. The natives, male and female, children and old dark-brown crones, stood silently, shifting their feet, watching, but not speaking.
“Come on, boy, open up!” Derr prodded the native angrily. “What's this whole thing ... what's that path there...?”
The native spun around, looked at Derr for a moment in annoyance and open anger, and then vaulted out of the half-track. In a moment he was lost in the crowd.
Derr had no other choice: he slung the stet-rifle over his shoulder, and slid up onto the rollbar between the driver's cab and the back seat, getting a better view of what was happening.
What was happening, as he settled himself, was that a medium-sized animal—the ones taken care of by the natives, and labeled, inevitably, ristables—was loping in from the grasslands; on six double-jointed legs.
It was the size of a large horse, or a small black bear. It was dull gray in color, mottled with whitish spots along the underbelly. Its chest was massive. It was built as an allosaurus might have been. Smooth front that rose straight up to a triangular skull with huge, pocketed eyes set forward on each side of the head. The back sloped sharply at forty-five degrees, ending in a horny tail. The head was darker gray, and had one gigantic unicorn-like horn protruding from a space midway between the eyes. No ... as Derr watched it coming closer, he saw that the horn was not single; there was a smaller, less apparent horn stuck down near the base of the larger one.
The beast also had two groups of vestigial tentacles, appearing to be six or eight to a cluster; one on either side of its body, halfway up the massive neck.
This was a ristable. As everything was ristable.
The beast charged down the path between the natives, much like a bull entering the Plaza de Toros, and stopped in the center, its little red eyes glaring, the two front paws clopping at the dirt, leaving furrows.
Abruptly, a native stepped out of the crowd, and removed all his clothing—little enough to begin with—and called to the animal (Derr continued to think of it as a bull, for no good reason, except this seemed to be a bullfight), clapping his hands, stamping his feet.
Bullfight, Derr thought. This is more like it. Then he thought, Ristable. Kill Day.
The native moved slowly, letting the beast edge in on him. It pawed the ground, and snorted through a pair of breather holes below the horns. Then the native leaped in the air, and chanted something unintelligible. As he came down in the dirt, the animal moved sharply, and charged across the cleared space. People in its line of attack stepped back quickly; and the native leaped agilely out of the way.
It went that way for over an hour.
The ristable charged, and the native leaped out of its path.
Then, when Derr was convinced it would go on this way till darkness ... the dance changed. Radically.
The native settled down cross-legged in the dirt, and clasped his hands to his chest. He settled down, and the bull charged. He settled down ... and...
Great God! thought Derr in horror, he's sitting there, letting it gore him. He's...
Then it was over, and they carried the native away, as the ristable loped back down the path to the grassland.
There was no reaction from the crowd: no dismay, no applause, no notice taken.
Derr slipped back into the half-track, bewildered; and sometime later, though Derr was unaware of it, the driver came back the truck, stared at him silently for a few seconds, then vaulted over the low door, and started the engine.
Derr stirred slightly as the half-track rolled away from the cleared space. His tracker's mind registered that the dirt was of a darker hue than when they had arrived; and that the rest of the natives were walking swiftly back toward the village ... carrying something sodden; but he seemed to be far lost in thought.
The half-track passed the natives, and arrived in town an hour before the sodden cargo was brought in and laid to rest alongside hundreds of previous loads filling identical graves.
* * * *
“I'm not going on with you, Nerrows,” Derr said.
“You know we'll be heading out—Artemis, Shoista, Lalook, Coastal II—and we won't be able to pick you up for almost three months.” He stared at Derr with annoyance.
“I know that.”
“Then why do you want to stay?”
“There's a trophy here I want.”
Nerrows’ eyes slitted down. “Watch that stuff, Derr.”
“No, no, nothing like that. The ristable.”
“You mean the animal out there in the fields, the one they go fight every week?”
Derr nodded, checked the stet-rifle, though he was not going hunting for a while yet. “That's it. But there's something important these natives don't know about that creature.”
“Yeah? What?”
“How to kill it.”
“What are you talking about?”
Derr settled back on the cot, looked at Nerrows carefully. “I talked to some of the natives when I got back yesterday from that ceremony. They go out every week to fight the ristable.”
“So?”
“They always lose.”
“Always?”
“Every damned time. They haven't won a bout with those beasts for as long as they can remember. Do you know that they plant their dead in rows of two hundred?”
The captain nodded. “Yes, I've noticed that.”
Derr pulled a cigar loose, lit it, smiled grimly. “But there's something you didn't know ... namely, they plant rows on top of the rows. What's out there now,” he waved at the native cemetery, “is the five-hundredth generation, or something like that. They've been fighting the ristables, dying regularly, and being planted for time beyond memory.”