“Easy…” he said. “I’ve never been kipled before.”
The next three days passed pleasantly.
Sensate focus was directed toward taste, smell and touch as they shared their viewscreen’s presentation of ancient ditties, ballads, ghost stories and other verses.
Moses kept his foot in the rung while the little hostile climbed the ladder. Through the bug-eyed lenses of his Pelger-Huet helmet, the scene appeared gray-on-gray. He listened to music—soothing strings—while he climbed. The wind whipped him about, as before, but he climbed steadily. The hostile gave him a hand up to the narrow icy ledge. They cracked their helmets and eyed each other.
“Sorry about the ladder ride the other day—but it was the best way I know to cure your Outside phobias.”
Moses shrugged. Cure or kill, he thought.
The hostile waited for his apology to be acknowledged. Moses glared.
“Okay, killer,” said the hostile, “follow me. We hike up the ridge to the snow line. Then it’s a mile or so to the cave. We can sleep there and go on to the summit in the morning.”
Moses followed with his helmet cracked to conserve oxygen—save enough to keep the incubus off his chest while he slept. The trail was narrow and rough. Snow flurries hid the hostile occasionally. Ice and loose drifts made the footing treacherous. Pitons and a line guided him on steep spots. At dusk he sipped water and turned on his suit light. Pausing at the lip of the miniglacier, Moses glanced eastward and saw the slopes of other mountains begin to glow as millions of cliff-dwellers turned on their lights. The foothills and flatlands remained dark—there were few lights in the gardens.
Wading through knee-deep powder tired Moses. He closed his helmet and took oxygen. A dark stone wall loomed ahead. The hostile’s light penciled about—illuminating black stone and white snow. A triangular crack at the base of the wall formed the mouth of a cave.
“Moses,” called the hostile. “You go inside and unroll your bedding while I try to find some firewood.” He began to make random circles in the snow.
Firewood? This far above the tree line? Moses was too fatigued to argue. Without a word Moses wandered deep into the cave looking for relief from the numbing cold. The walls were icy, about five feet apart at the mouth, and widening to a cubicle-sized chamber about twenty yards inside. He flashed his light around. Odd. He thought he smelled wood burning.
“Okay in there?” came the hostile’s shout from the mouth of the cave.
Moses turned around to answer. A moment later he was knocked to his knees by a thunder clap that vibrated the cave floor and showered him with pebbles. In the silence that followed he heard an evil laugh from further back in the cave. The thunder clap had come from the mouth of the cave. There were no more sounds from the hostile.
Moses crawled into a corner and turned off his light. Footsteps approached from the back of the cave. He fumbled for his small ice pick. The footsteps were accompanied by a flickering torch.
Moses held his breath. What he saw chilled him. A sinewy old man approached carrying a burning pine cone on a stout spear. His legs were wrapped below the knees, and he wore tattered rags and a loose outer cloak. He was not alone. Walking before him was a squarish, four-legged beast that should have been long extinct—a seventy-pound, long-snouted carnivore. The beast was covered with battle scars. Its eyes were slits behind thick lids of gristle. Moses did not know its species, but its long, well-toothed snout told its diet.
Man and beast moved past Moses toward the mouth of the cave. Several minutes later they returned carrying peculiar jointed structures that dripped. The man’s resembled a human leg, the dog’s a human arm. This time the procession stopped at Moses’ hiding place.
“Eppendorff?” called the old man, shifting his grip on the dripping burden. He carried it casually at the knee. “Come back to our fire. We want to talk.”
From his seated position on the floor of the cave Moses viewed the beast as hopeless odds. The beast squinted at him through slant eyes, wagged its tail three times and led the way back to the fire. Its hunk of meat dragged—leaving a sticky trail. Moses got to his feet and tried to be casual about slipping his ice pick back into his belt.
The flame was small, stingy, fed by a few resinous fragments of pine knot. The walls were sooty. The floor was littered with small bundles of twigs and bones—cracked femurs, arched ribcages, and a whole line of skulls up against the wall.
A buckeye camp site!
The old man stabbed a peg under the leg’s Achilles tendon and hung it in one of the dark recesses of the cave.
“Pull up a rock and relax. I’ll have something cooking for us in a minute.”
“You’re not planning on eating that—” Moses gagged.
That red thing? Oh, no. Fresh stuff is too tough. I have a nice black aged quarter here someplace.”
The old man crawled back into another recess and returned with a shrunken dark object fuzzed with mold. Moses couldn’t recognize it—he asked no questions.
The glowing coals flared up white and blue under the dripping meat. The beast lay, paws and chin on its raw forequarter, until the old man gestured for it to eat. Then its powerful teeth crunched quickly—devouring soft tissue and bone alike. Only the epiphyses of the long bones remained—dense and without marrow. Moses was fascinated by the sheen of the beast’s teeth. They looked metallic!
“The conditions in this cave are ideal for aging meat,” said the old man, offering Moses a generous muscle bundle. “Almost makes the trip worthwhile.”
Moses held his portion at arm’s length.
“Go ahead and eat,” said the old man. “You’re from the hive. Where do you think all your woven protein comes from—algae? Ha! This is the same thing, only it hasn’t had all the flavors processed out.”
Moses frowned. “Meat? Wasn’t that a human being you just killed? Don’t you have any feelings?”
“Just so much protein to me,” snarled the old man. “Can’t have too much feeling for the four-toed hive creatures—parasites!” Pointing his spear at Moses for emphasis, he admonished: “And don’t waste time mourning that one. He had the same thing planned for you. Didn’t you notice the way he sent you into the cave first with the pretext of looking for firewood? He’s been at this Rec Center long enough to know the gossip. I’ve been here before—and they never know when I’ll be back.”
“You’re a—buckeye?”
The old man stood up apologetically: “Oh, I am sorry. We’ve been eavesdropping on you so long—waiting for you to come up here—that we forgot you didn’t know us. I’m Moon—old man Moon, and this is my dog, Dan.”
“Eavesdropping?” said Moses, handing his charred muscle to the dog.
“Toothpick spied on you. He has the circuits for it.”
Moon gestured towards his spear.
“Hi,” said the spear. “I’m Toothpick. Actually, your being here is my idea.”
Eppendorff stared at the spear—a machine. A very sophisticated machine. His years in the Pipe caste had exposed him to many machines—mostly class tens. Toothpick was more than a class ten.
“But why?”
“We want you to come with us—live Outside,” said Toothpick.
“Impossible. Life is too short for me to waste it being hunted.”
Moon handed Toothpick to him, saying: “Here, Eppendorff, take Toothpick for a walk. Let him convince you.”
Moses Eppendorff carried Toothpick gingerly toward the mouth of the cave. They passed a massive stone deadfall and stepped out under the stars. Moses turned on his suit heat and light, cracking the helmet open.
Toothpick spoke: “Don’t mind the way Moon talks. He has confidence in me because I’m so old. Actually I’m just a leftover cyber from the period when man had many of us. It was an age of high technology and low population density—man and his machines were all over this planet, in the sea and air—even off planet—the moon, near space—even Mars and Deimos. Ancient five-toed man even dreamed of star travel. I enjoyed those days—companion cybers were numerous. My circuits must have been on stand-by for centuries. I still feel strong, well-charged. Now I am Moon’s cyber. He gives me intellectual stimulation. I try to protect him. But now I think we need a younger man: you, Moses. Moon and Dan are old—nearly two hundred. Their genetic clocks are off, but their scars accumulate—slowing them down. Hunters will get them soon, unless we have a new strong partner.”