Those children’s tales about people lost in the woods who immediately set about adapting to life in the open, and turn instantly into capable hunters and builders of dwelling-places, were just that—fables. Theremon regarded himself as a reasonably competent man, as city-dwellers went; but he knew that he had no more chance of hunting down any of the forest animals than he did of making the municipal power generators start to work again. And as for building a dwelling-place, the best he had been able to do was throw together a simple lean-to of branches and twigs, which at least had kept most of the rain away from him on the one stormy day.
But now the weather was warm and lovely again, and he had actual meat for dinner. The only problem now was cooking it. He was damned if he was going to eat it raw.
Ironic that in a city that had just undergone near-total destruction by fire he should be pondering how he was going to go about cooking some meat. But most of the worst fires had burned themselves out by now, and the rain had taken care of the rest. And though for a while in the first few days after the catastrophe it had seemed as though new fires were still being lit, that didn’t seem to be happening any more.
I’ll figure something out, Theremon thought. Rub two sticks together and get a spark? Strike metal against stone and set a scrap of cloth ablaze?
Some boys on the far side of a lake near the place where he was camped had obligingly killed the animal for him. Of course, they hadn’t known they were doing him any favor—most likely they had been planning to eat it themselves, unless they were so unhinged that they were simply chasing the creature for the sake of sport. Somehow he doubted that. They had been pretty purposeful about it, with a singlemindedness that only hunger can inspire.
The beast was a graben—one of those ugly long-nosed bluish-furred things with slithery hairless tails that sometimes could be seen poking around suburban garbage cans after Onos had set. Well, beauty wasn’t a requirement just now. The boys had somehow flushed it out of its daytime hiding place and had driven the poor stupid thing into a little dead-end box of a canyon.
As Theremon watched from the other side of the lake, disgusted and envious at the same time, they chased it tirelessly up and down, pelting it with rocks. For a dumb scavenger it was remarkably agile, scooting swiftly this way and that in its desperation to elude its attackers. But finally a lucky shot caromed off its head and killed it instantly.
He had assumed that they would devour it on the spot. But at that moment a shaggy, shambling figure came into view above them, standing for a moment at the rim of the little canyon, then beginning to climb down toward the lake.
“Run! It’s Garpik the Slasher!” one of the boys yelled.
“Garpik! Garpik!”
In an instant the boys scattered, leaving the dead graben behind.
Theremon, still watching, had slipped back into the shadows on his side of the lake. He also knew this Garpik, though not by name: one of the most dreaded of the forest-dwellers, a squat, almost ape-like man who wore nothing but a belt through which an assortment of knives was thrust. He was a killer without motive, a cheerful psychopath, a pure predator.
Garpik stood by the mouth of the canyon for a while, humming to himself, fondling one of his knives. He didn’t seem to notice the dead animal, or didn’t care. Perhaps he was waiting for the boys to come back. But plainly they weren’t planning to do that, and after a time Garpik, with a shrug, went slouching off into the forest, most likely in search of something amusing to do with his weapons.
Theremon waited an endless moment, making certain Garpik didn’t intend to double back and pounce on him.
Then—when he could no longer bear the sight of the dead graben lying there on the ground, where some other human or animal predator might suddenly come along to seize it before he did—he rushed forward, circled the lake, snatched the animal up, carried it back to his hiding place.
It weighed as much as a small child. It might be good for two or three meals—or more, if he could restrain his hunger and if the meat didn’t spoil too quickly.
His head was spinning with hunger. He had had nothing but fruits and nuts to eat for more days than he could remember. His skin had drawn tight over his muscles and bones; what little spare fat he had been carrying he had long since absorbed, and now he was consuming his own strength in the struggle to stay alive. But this evening, at last, he would enjoy a little feast.
Roast graben! What a treat! he thought bitterly.—And then he thought: Be grateful for small meroies, Theremon.
Let’s see—to build a fire, now—
Fuel, first. Behind his shelter was a flat wall of rock with a deep lateral crack in it, in which a line of weeds was growing. Plenty of them were long dead and withered, and had dried out since the last rainstorm. Quickly Theremon moved along the rock wall, plucking yellowed stems and leaves, assembling a little heap of straw-like material that would catch fire easily.
Now some dry twigs. They were harder to find, but he rummaged around the forest floor, looking for dead shrubs or at least shrubs with dead branches. The afternoon was well along by the time he had put together enough of that sort of tinder to matter: Dovim was gone from the sky, and Trey and Patru, which had been low on the horizon when the boys were hunting the graben, now had moved into the center of things, like a pair of glittering eyes watching the sorry events on Kalgash from far overhead.
Carefully Theremon arranged his kindling-wood above the dried plants, building a framework as he imagined a real outdoorsman would, the bigger branches along the outside, then the thinner ones crisscrossed over the middle. Not without some difficulty, he skewered the graben on a spit he had made of a sharp, reasonably straight stick, and positioned it a short distance above the woodpile.
So far, so good. Just one little thing missing, now.
Fire!
He had kept his mind away from that problem while assembling his fuel, hoping that it would solve itself somehow without his having to dwell on it. But now it had to be faced. He needed a spark. The old boys’-book trick of rubbing two sticks together was, Theremon was certain, nothing but a myth. He had read that certain primitive tribes had once started their fires by twirling a stick against a board with a little hole in it, but he suspected that the process wasn’t all that simple, that it probably took an hour of patient twirling to get anything going. And in any case very likely you had to be initiated into the art by the old man of the tribe when you were a boy, or some such thing, or it wouldn’t work.
Two rocks, though—was it possible to strike a spark by banging one against the other?
He doubted that too. But he might as well try it, he thought. He had no other ideas. There was a wide flat stone lying nearby, and after a little searching he found a smaller triangular one that could fit conveniently in the palm of his hand. He knelt beside his little fireplace and began methodically to hit the flat one with the pointed one.
Nothing in particular happened.
A hopeless feeling began to grow in him. Here I am, he thought, a grown man who can read and write, who can drive a car, who can even operate a computer, more or less. I can turn out a newspaper column in two hours that everybody in Saro City will want to read, and I can do it day in, day out, for twenty years. But I can’t start a fire in the wilderness.
On the other hand, he thought, I will not eat this graben raw unless I absolutely have to. Will not. Will not. Not. Not. Not!
In fury he struck the stones together, again, again, again.
Spark, damn you! Light! Burn! Cook this ridiculous pathetic animal for me!