Roger Zelazny - Donnerjack

However, as her legs parted and her hips commenced small thrusting movements, the guardian unit halted its preparation for her recall. As Lydia moaned softly, it was already investigating her situation in Virtu. Sexual intercourse of the non-rape variety normally extended the grace period for its duration. With rape, of course, it mattered from a recreational standpoint whether one were rendering it or receiving it. Subtleties involving jurisdiction and the protection of one’s client also came into play. The scan showed this particular lay to be of the voluntary, mutually recreational variety. The monitor was, unfortunately, unable to appreciate the esthetics and physiological sequelae of terminating presence with one’s lover immediately following orgasm.

Abruptly, her legs locked themselves about invisible hips. Her pumping movements grew more frantic, and her nails raked an unseen back. The monitor detected increased heartbeat, blood pressure, breathing rate, and volume per inhalation. It did not notice that she was smiling. This is only known as the “demon lover effect” when people view it from the one side, while eating popcorn.

As soon as the big relaxation came it commenced the recall sequence.

… And fell. And blasted fell…

His assembled body limp at the bottom of inertia, he passed downward from the topless height, surfaces singed as if by a stroke of lightning.

The trail had taken him through lands both hollow and hilly, through dead domains like abandoned movie sets. Up, ever up, had it led, into the realms of painful light. But he was not one to lose a trail, and he had followed, followed. Running up vertical surfaces, leaping chasms without bottoms, he sought. Seeking, he—

—found?

Rather, he was found.

One moment, he followed a scent. The next moment, it was all around him. He rose into the air and spun, fantasy dance of a pied autumn leaf. And the brightness was awesome.

“Oh, frightful dogger of this trail,” snapped a voice from everywhere, like the scent, “you have come too far!”

Mizar threw back his head and commenced the howl Death had taught him.

With a crackling sound, the brightness condensed upon his person. His howl was cut off, barely past its inception. Again, he was turning, and a new smell filled the air, that of burning insulation, boiled glue, singed paint, welded metal. Rolling, ass over knee joint, tail in eye, he felt himself cast beyond the edge of the great crag in the silent sky where stars bloom in the always twilight and clouds drift far below.

Blasted by the light, the darkness came upon him.

Falling, falling then—for days, ages perhaps, depending on the worlds he fell through—

—down…

Tranto had lost track of time in his wanderings. Not that he ever paid it a great deal of heed, but the madness laid a distorting red haze over most things, time and space among them.

As the pain subsided, however, the frantic characteristic of the huge phant’s approach to existence was also abated. The haze grew dim, and with its passing he was able to stop and eat the flowers again. He noted after a time that he occupied a great plain near to the edge of a jungle. It stirred memories of an earlier existence, for he recalled being small among others of his kind in a place such as this. And who knew? He might even have returned to those very ranges. He browsed, barely thinking, for days, his mind adrift in a place halfway between dreaming and wakefulness. This was the glorious euphoria which normally followed his spells. Moving, eating, and drinking, gaining back the mass he had lost, he found it an unnecessary effort to do more than respond to circumstances. That, and enjoy without reflection the simple realities of being.

The days drifted by, and nothing came to trouble him. All of the local predators found him intimidating—an abnormally large phant, with great jaw sabers that looked as if they had been carved from pieces of a wrecked moon. Sometime after the pain had passed and his senses seemed returned to normal, he wondered, for the first time, whether there might be others of his kind in the vicinity. He had known many herds over the years, and he realized now that he missed their company. Perhaps more than just company. It would be good to have a mate again. His symptoms had been gone for a sufficiently long while now that it was unlikely they would recur in the near future.

And so he sought. First he must find a herd. His kind were generally of a herding persuasion. While he was often an exception to this rule, the desire for company returned to him periodically, causing him to seek, as he sought now, after a group of the others. Of course, merely finding them would hardly be sufficient. He would have to persuade them to take him in. Traditionally, this meant a lengthy probationary period as a classless hanger-on. Too long, this always seemed too long. Still—there was an etiquette, a set of rules to follow in these matters. And the first thing, really, was to locate a herd.

He trumpeted, long and loud, then listened after the echoes had died. There was no response, not that he had expected one the first time he made inquiry. He sounded his call again, then browsed for a long while. Afterwards, he drank his fill at the water hole.

It seemed that he would have to go and find them. Since the only spoor in the area was quite ancient and no one had answered his inquiry, one direction would seem almost as good as another. Except for the west. The jungle lay to the west.

The present area showed signs of recent recovery from overbrowsing. His kind had been here and had moved on. The land was now well on the way to recovery, so he knew that they would return eventually, when they had exhausted new ranges. Of course, the plain was vast, and it could be a very long while; on the other hand, there were other herds upon the plain… He pondered this for only a short while.

Now that he felt his stamina and full rationality returned, he did not wish to wait upon a chance encounter. It would be good to smell the others, to rub shoulders as he browsed. There was no real reason to wait around here and ample reason to depart. He would go looking. He would find them.

He turned slowly. North, east, west, south… Yes, south. There was an old trail.

He began walking in that direction. He only half followed the dried trail. There were phants somewhere in the south and that was sufficient. There was no real need to hurry. Once he made a decision and began acting it was as if some natural law had been invoked. His patience was as legendary as his wrath.

His memory was excellent, also. As he traveled, he recalled stony lowlands that he passed as things seen when he was smaller and they had seemed bigger. He was, however, not consciously given to sentimentality, for he had never learned the concept. He trudged steadily southward, and predators whose territory he crossed went and hid until he had gone by. He browsed amid long grasses, slaked his thirst at water hole or forest stream. Dark birds came and walked upon his back, grooming him of insect pests. Occasionally, they chatted:

“Nasty scar there, big fella. How’d you get it?”

“Main pole of a circus tent scraped me, when I knocked it down. May 11, 2108.”

“Oh, you’ve been to the big city!”

“Indeed.”

“Never knew anyone to come back.”

“Now you do. Seen any of my kind of people in the neighborhood recently?”

“Recently, no. They come and go.”

“Know of any to the south?”

“That’s the way they headed. I may be flying down that way soon, what with the bug shortage here. What about this one?”

“That’s from a spear wielded by a gooey man.”

“Gooey man? What’s that?”