Garth shook his head. "It's too risky, brother. Kill it. A dead lobox is just as useful to us as a live one, and a lot safer." He turned to the woman. "Harper, find me a rock or a wrench or something, will you? I'm going to beat its brains out."
"I don't want to kill it," I replied as I abruptly kicked the wedge out from under the doorknob.
The lobox seemed momentarily confused by the sudden easing of the pressure on its neck. I nudged the door open even further, then knocked the sticks together in front of its bleeding nose. The creature started, then wheeled around, its claws tearing free of the improvised net, and raced beneath the menacing tusks of the trumpeting Mabel, out of the silo.
"That was stupid, Mongo," Garth said in the same soft, even tone.
"It's basically after me. It was my call."
"And it was a stupid one. We should have killed it when we had the chance. I know how you feel about animals, and I appreciate that it's only following its instincts and training, but I can't believe you could be so sentimental about an animal that's determined to kill you."
"It's not sentiment. I say a live lobox is more valuable than a dead one. If Luther gets away with the others and they end up as assassination weapons, it might help if the good guys had a live lobox to learn from."
"Well, you shouldn't have let the damn thing get away. All you did was beat the shit out of it, and now it's going to run right back to Luther."
Harper moved closer to me, and I put my arm around her. "I don't think so, Garth," she said. "Robby hasn't wiped out its training program or its instincts. He hasn't created a cowardly lobox, just a very confused one. It won't go very far."
"Right," I said. "It won't go back to Luther unless it kills me-or chooses to believe that it can't, or shouldn't."
Garth looked back and forth between Harper and me. "So what happens now?"
"What happens now is that I want the two of you to go up to the cheap seats by the vents and watch my next trick," I said, and stepped out through the doorway.
"Mongo?! What the hell-?!"
"You said I should make it mine," I said, waggling one end of a nunchaku stick at my startled brother. I took the broken padlock out of my pocket, glanced at it, then tossed it away. There was no sense in trying to lock up my brother, because he would be through the door just about in time to distract me from what I had to do. And probably get himself killed. "Well, I don't have time to explain to you how I propose to do that, or why it has to be done this way. But I have to go now. I'll be all right. You wait here. If you want to watch, you take Harper with you and go up to the vent at the front."
Without waiting for a reply, I wheeled around and started walking across the silo floor, pausing to pat a very skittish Mabel on the trunk. I edged carefully up to the slightly open door and could feel Mabel moving up behind me. Standing just at the edge of a wedge of sunlight that streamed in through the opening, I took a series of deep breaths, trying to relax and steady my nerves.
If the lobox was waiting for me just on the other side of the silo wall, I was a dead man. Yet I had no choice but to go out and face it. I sucked in one last deep breath, slowly exhaled, then stepped out of the silo into the bright sunlight.
So far, so good.
The lobox was lying on the patch of grass about twenty yards away, to my right. It sprang to its feet when it saw me, but remained where it was. I spun my nunchaku sticks, first one and then the other, then gripped them and smacked them together. The hide of the lobox began to quiver, its ruff suddenly expanded, and it charged.
It might have been wishful thinking, but in the second or two I had to evaluate distance, speed, and angles as the lobox rushed at me, it seemed to me that the animal was not moving with its former speed. Since I had not really hurt anything but its pride, I had to assume that its relative slowness represented a newfound uncertainty and lack of confidence on its part. It was a beginning, I thought as I leaped to my left at the same instant as the creature screamed, left its feet, and came flying through the air at my head. For one terrifying second I thought I had misjudged, and that its claws would tear off my right arm, but it missed-and I swung my sticks-on-a-chain, caught the lobox on its right flank. It yelped in pain, landed, screamed, and spun around to face me.
I smacked the sticks together again, took two quick steps toward the animal, stopped and crouched, ready. The lobox backed away a few feet, then abruptly stopped and stared at me.
"Come on, furball," I said, banging the sticks together. "Want to try again?"
It most certainly did want to try again. The creature suddenly sprang forward, its claws slipping in the dirt at its feet. It seemed even slower now-or I was gaining confidence. This time I was easily able to sidestep the animal's leap, and as it passed me in the air I swung a stick down hard on the top of its skull, then managed to whip the stick around again and catch it on a hind leg. The lobox yelped loudly. This time it stumbled when it landed. It went down, rolled over, got up.
But now its ruff was down.
"Come on," I said, furiously clicking the sticks together. "Come on!"
I inched forward, to within a yard, again crouched and waited.
Suddenly the beast seemed to collapse-or the front end of it seemed to collapse. It dropped the top of its head to the ground, pushed with its hind legs. Its rear end went up, and for a moment it balanced on its head, before toppling over on its side. It got up, once more appeared to try to stand on its head, toppled over. This time it didn't get up. It rolled over on its back, thrust all four legs stiffly into the air, and extended its head back, exposing its throat.
It was the damnedest thing I ever saw.
And then I remembered that I had seen it once before-or a depiction of a lobox trying to stand on its head, in the photograph Nate Button had shown me of one of the Lascaux paintings. Button had said that the painting had been done by a poor artist who had been unable to capture the terror Cro-Magnon felt before the lobox. Button had been wrong.
The Cro-Magnon artist had painted a lobox displaying a posture of submission.
Well, well, well.
I suppressed a nervous, near-hysterical giggle and backed off a few steps to ponder the meaning of it all. Behind and above me, from the direction of the silo, I heard the sound of clapping. I turned in that direction, using my peripheral vision to keep track of the supine lobox, looked up, and saw Harper standing at the edge of the vent halfway up the side of the silo.
"My hero!" Harper called.
"You did good, Mongo," Garth said in a low voice that nevertheless carried clearly to me. I lowered my gaze, saw that Garth was standing next to Mabel just outside the open silo doors. "You did real good."
I waved my nunchaku sticks in their direction, resisting the impulse to make an elaborate bow. In fact, I knew that the real test of just what I had actually accomplished was yet to come, and I saw no sense in further delaying it. Without giving myself any more time to think about it, I unhesitatingly strode over to the lobox, which was still lying on its back with its legs thrust stiffly into the air, looked down into its golden eyes, which now seemed curiously veiled, clouded.
"Be careful, Mongo," Garth continued in the same low tone. "Don't press your luck."
Very carefully, and also very gently, I touched the animal's rib cage with the end of one of my sticks. "Up," I said. I waited a few moments, then applied slightly more pressure. "Up."