Daeman shouldered his way through the high stalks for eight or ten rows, trying to get far enough away from the edge of the field to be completely invisible. Then he walked another eight or nine rows to be safe. He found a row perhaps a bit less muddy than the other rows, looked around, set the flashlight against a cornstalk so the beam cut upward only—reminding him of the blue beam in Jerusalem—and then he dropped his trousers, squatted, and dug a shallow hole with his hands. What did Savi call this? he thought. Camping?
When he was finished—a terrific relief, despite the barbarous circumstances—he did the best he could with the wet and soggy tissues in his hand, found it not enough, tossed the tissues into the muddy hole, and then felt the bulge in his tunic pocket. He pulled out the thirty inches of folded material that he always carried. His turin cloth. In the light reflecting from the flashlight-illuminated cornstalks above him, he studied the fine linen and the beautiful microcircuit-imprinted embroidery that brought the turin drama directly to one’s brain. Watching the Trojans battle the Achaeans had been an occasional habit of his for years, but after meeting the real Odysseus—if the bearded old man was the real Odysseus, which didn’t seem at all likely—Daeman didn’t retain much interest in the turin drama. Odysseus had not only slept with one of the girls Daeman had planned to seduce, Hannah, but he’d gone home to Ardis Hall with Daeman’s primary target of opportunity, Ada. Still, he held the beautiful linen cloth in his hand as if weighing it.
To hell with it. Daeman used it—taking an unexpected pleasure in vicariously treating the arrogant Odysseus this way—tossed it in the hole, kicked mud over the hole, hitched up his trousers and set his tunic straight, tried to wash his hands against the rain-slick cornstalks, and then picked up his flashlight and walked the two dozen or so rows out of the field.
But there was no end to the field. After thirty-five rows or so, he was sure he had gone the wrong direction. He spun around, trying to ascertain the correct direction—all he had to do was follow his muddy footprints back in the opposite direction—but the spinning had disoriented him so that he couldn’t tell which direction he’d been heading. And the footprints were nowhere to be found. The lightning was more intense now, the rain coming down harder.
“Help!” shouted Daeman. He waited a second, heard no reply, and shouted again. “Help! I’m lost in here!” Thunder drowned out both of his cries.
He turned again, then again, decided that this had to be the right direction back, and began running through the high corn, bending stalks aside, battering at them with the small flashlight. He forgot to count the rows, but must have gone forty or fifty wet rows before stopping again.
“Help! I’m in here!” This time no thunder drowned his shouting, but there was still no reply, no noise except for the hard patter of rain on the cornstalks and the squelch of his soggy city shoes.
He began moving up a row, watching to both sides for light or movement, not thinking of how this movement would just get him further away from the other two. After several minutes he had to pause for breath.
“Help!” Lightning struck less than a mile away and the thunder moved across the tall corn like a shock wave. Daeman blinked away the afterimages of the flash and noticed that the corn seemed less thick up the row and to his right. It had to be the edge of the field.
He ran the last fifteen rows or so and burst into the opening.
It was not the edge of the field where he’d entered, but a clearing, perhaps twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep. In the center of the clearing, rising six or eight feet taller than the corn, was a large metal cross. Daeman ran the beam of the flashlight from the base of the cross up to the top of it.
The figure was not on the cross, but, rather, nestled in the hollowed-out metal form, its naked torso wedged into the upright column, its bare arms extended in the crossmembers. The flashlight beam jiggled in the downpour as Daeman stared.
It was not a man—at least like no man Daeman had ever seen. The man-thing was naked and slick, scaled and greenish—not fish-green, but with the green Daeman had always imagined as the color of corpses before the firmary ended such barbarities. The scales were small and numerous and gleamed in the flashlight. The thing was well-muscled, but the muscles were wrong—the arms too long, forearms too lanky, wrists too powerful, knuckles far too large, yellow claws instead of fingernails, thighs too powerful, feet three-toed and oddly splayed. It was a male—the penis and scrotum were obscenely visible and garishly pink beneath the washboard stomach and muscled abdomen, again somehow wrong, like a turtle or shark with almost-human genitalia—but the thick upper torso, snakelike neck, and hairless head were the least human aspects of the creature. Rain ran off the muscles and scales and banded ligaments, dripping across the rough black metal of the cross.
The eyes were sunken under brows at once apelike and fishlike and the face extruded out more snout or gill-like than nose. Under the snout, the thing’s mouth hung slightly open and Daeman stared at the long yellow teeth—not human, not animal, more fishlike if fish were monsters—and a far-too-long blue-ish tongue that stirred even as Daeman watched. He flicked the flashlight beam higher and almost screamed again.
The man-thing’s eyes had opened—oblong yellow cat’s-eyes, without a cat’s cool connection to humanity—with tiny black slits in the center. The thing . . . what had Savi called it? A calibani ?—stirred in its cross-niche, the hands opened from fists to extended fingers, long claws catching the light, and the legs and torso shifted as if the creature were waking and stretching.
There were no restraints on it. There was nothing to keep it from leaping down at Daeman this instant.
Daeman tried to run, but found that he couldn’t turn his back on the thing. It stirred again, its right hand and most of its arm coming free from the cross-niche. Its feet, Daeman now saw, also held yellow claws at the end of the webbed toes.
There was a crashing and roar behind Daeman—more calibani, already free from their crosses, he was sure—and Daeman whirled to meet their charge, raising the flashlight like a club and losing the light from it.
His feet slipped, or his legs weakened, and Daeman went to his knees in the mud in the clearing. He felt like crying, but didn’t think he did in the few seconds before the crawler burst from the row of corn, looming like a monstrous spider over Daeman and the cornfield and the cross and the unmoving calibani. The crawler’s eight headlights switched on, blinding him. He threw his forearm across his face, but, he realized later, more to hide his tears than to protect his eyes from the light.
Dressed in thermskins, the two men reclining on the cracked leather chairs and the old woman lying on the inner curve of the glass sphere, they ate their foodbars, passed around the water bottle, and watched the storm in silence for a while. Daeman had asked Savi to get away from the field and the cross and the creature, so she’d driven a mile or two up the red clay road before pulling to the side and shutting off everything but the crawler’s forcefield and dim virtual panels.
“What was that thing?” Daeman said at last.
“One of the calibani,” said Savi. She actually looked comfortable lying on the glass wall, backpack behind her head.
“I know what you called them,” snapped Daeman. “What are they?”
Savi sighed. “If I start explaining one thing, then I have to explain the rest. There’s a lot you eloi don’t know—almost everything, actually.”
“Why don’t you start with explaining why you call us eloi,” said Harman. His voice was hard.