CHAPTER 49
He moved carefully toward the fireblaze, walking rather than trotting to catch every scent, tallying the information with what he saw and heard. Two persons and two men, none smelling of fear or anger, talking in voices he could have heard a kilometer away. He had not been hungry, not with twenty kilos of dogmeat in his belly, but the odors of Schreiner food would titillate a gourmand of any species. He identified armadillo (roasted over slow mesquite embers), Corsican lamb (with braised mint), and something he could not place (no wonder: ostrich-egg omelet with avocado and eggplant). This last tumble of sensation was a nose-puzzler, and he snorted.
The slender person turned, her night vision lost in the glare of bonfire, and stared directly toward him.
"What was that?"
He studied her alertness; could detect no fear. Other voices calmed her. He might pass behind them to the shallow waterhole, but knew they would hear him drink. Well, they were on ground he had chosen, however temporarily, as his and now he was salivating for the food that lay in plain sight near the four humans who sat on stones and taunted him unaware. He moved nearer between stunted cedars, then nearer still to the very edge of the firelight without being detected. In his way he was having his little joke, easing into their very midst in utter silence. But not without odors of his own.
The louder of the two men took a coffee cup, sniffed, said, "Hutch, what do I smell in this Java?"
Hutch, blinking: "Why — just coffee. Whoo-eee, but that's rank! It isn't coffee, podnuh, smells more like a stray—", and then he peered across the firelight into the eyes of a primordial power and lust unmatched by any homicidal maniac since time began.
Hutch's lips formed the word: Baal, but could not say it aloud. To his surpassing credit he quavered instead, "Folks, do not move. I'm dead serious; don't scream, don't do nothiri'. Aw, my great — good — Gawd — almighty."
The slender person glanced between the two scrub trees, hardly a spit away for Hutch; drew a breath; fainted.
Her consort stared and was paralyzed as surely as though he had seen the face of Medusa.
Eve, in the act of fanging a lamb riblet, would have shrieked had her mouth not been full. She jerked; which brought a hellish visage swinging toward her.
In a husked tremor: "Evie. For your life, gal, don't panic." The bristle-edged ears flicked but did not flatten. Hutch knew animals. He wondered if animal lore applied to this leviathan. He saw Eve's wide eyes beseeching him, and his right hand might be near enough to the holster for him to get off one shot.
He knew with utter certainty that six rounds would not be enough.
Eve saw the guide's leathery face ashen in the flickering firelight, his hand twitching near the six-gun, and knew that his mortal terror was justified. Her gaze was drawn again to the colossal bloodstained beast, a Russian boar so enormous that he seemed heraldic; mythological. He sat at his ease as if judging them all, his long dark triangular head as high as a man's. His little eyes — reddish yellowed whites that matched the incredible tusks — gleamed with intelligence and with calm intent under the scarred brows. They missed nothing, yielded nothing, feared nothing. Eve swallowed with an audible gulp.
"Easy now," Hutch whispered. "Toss that bone down in front of him."
She did it. The great muscular shoulders flowed forward, hindquarters up and disproportionately small but corded with sinew and crossed like the shoulders with old scars. Ba'al's shoulder hump was the size of a young bison's but his entire body would not have yielded enough fat to grease a skillet. He dipped his snout, still gazing steadily at his hostages, and Eve saw flecks of foam on his jaws as he took the offering. Then without being told, she astonished herself by easing forward, grasping the stainless steel warmer, placing it in the dirt, toeing it in the boar's direction.
The flywhisk tail switched once. He stepped forward, dainty mincing steps on split hooves that seemed tiny though they would have sufficed for an Olympic elk. Ba'al vented one subterranean grunt, buried his snout in the lamb as Eve stood two paces away. Hands at her sides, facing this horrendous brute, she stood filled with awe and with a wild rush of something she had felt many times before. Never like this.
Trembling, she stood before an animal whose natural weapons beggared those of Bengal tiger and Kodiak bear, whose awesome constantly-whetted tusks could have sliced paper, and she welcomed the rush of emotion.
From behind her, a barely recognizable thin male squeaclass="underline" "Shoot, Hutch, for God's sake shoot!"
"I don't dare," was the soft reply. "Evie, back up real careful. Everybody move slow into the chuck-wagon."
Unwilling, Eve backed away. She was last into the cramped cargo hold of the hoverbus, puffing with exertion as she found a seat. The young couple were both crying with relief as Hutch flicked toggles; engaged the diesel starter.
The diesel's clatter angered the great animal. Ba'al backed away from his feast, ears flat; rushed the vehicle, slamming ivory knives against the thin aluminum of the engine hatch. Hutch shut the engine off instantly and sighed aloud to see the beast amble back to the food panniers. "Well, he damn' sure ain't got a radio," said Hutch with new confidence and punched out a code on the radiophone.
Eve half-listened to the conversation, fully aware of its portent as she peered out the window at Ba'al.
She hadn't known the little hoverbus carried a phone but since it did, she had a potential link to CenCom.
Help couldn't reach them for hours, said the ranch manager. It was up to Hutch to keep his charges alive until then. To the manager's suggestion Hutch said, "Sure we can take pictures, the ugly devil's near enough that I could make his dental chart. And when you see 'em, you'll see why I ain't gonna go up against him with no damn' handgun. Shoot, Mac, I'd sooner face a grizzly with a willow switch, them tushes is long as my forearm! I just hope he don't decide to use 'em for can-openers. Listen, maybe you could home the chopper in on us; buzz us a little. Maybe the wind would send him off — or if you got it down low enough maybe he'd chase it. No shit, Mac, this is the real article: Ba'al! If the notion struck him he'd chase King Kong clean to Mexico!"
After completing his call, Hutch moved aft to comfort the poor in spirit. It was going to be okay, they'd be safe if they kept quiet and took a few infrared photos which, he opined, would command a tidy sum.
As Eve squeezed into a front seat near the controls, Hutch maintained a running mono-log and helped the others ready their cameras.
Eve found her bag and the scrambler module, saw that the radiophone was standard, and quietly set about her contact with CenCom. The Ember of Venus slid up from between her breasts. In another moment she was encoding.
Hutch did not notice. Poor sniveling human; she had seen him wither to an empty palpitating shell before an awesome potency that no mere man could ever approach. Eve was not one to ask herself whether she had overtrodden the boundaries of sanity in her grappling toward greater sensation. Her sole criterion was, 'Can I get away with it?'
Her alphanumeric readout glowed in the bezel. It looked as if she might indeed get away with it. From some forgotten veterinary file, CenCom provided an answer that Eve did not wholly understand, nor did she need to. The tiny synthesizer understood and accepted its task, for the female sex pheromone of the wild asiatic pig was within its capability. Eve disconnected the radiophone; smiled at the firelit scene ten meters distant.
She was still sitting there smiling when, minutes later, Hutch came forward. He had watched the huge predator move to the waterhole, had heard the contented bass grunts of Ba'al at his toilette. Maybe, he said, they could start up the diesel without startin' a one-sided war.