Roger Zelazny - Donnerjack

“There certainly is a similarity, isn’t there? Not identical, but enough to make fairly clear that they’re related.”

“That was my thought as well. Not all fathers and sons look as much alike as you and your mother do, Alice. I would guess that if Jay isn’t Donnerjack’s son, he’s a nephew—maybe a young cousin.”

Link nodded, still studying the holograms. “Did you find a record of a wife?”

Drum shrugged. “None, but that’s hardly telling. I didn’t find any register of children, either, which puzzled me. I would have bet—given the address, the fact that Jay was being driven by someone from the Institute—that Jay was Donnerjack’s son. I didn’t find any record of Donnerjack having siblings either, so the nephew line is a bit tenuous.

Still, I think I’ve found your Jay. He’s a relation of the Donnerjack family and, at least part of the time, resides in a castle in Scotland.”

“Let’s call him!”

“I tried—used a different virt domino so Dack wouldn’t know the same person was calling. Not only didn’t I get Jay, Dack refused to acknowledge that there was such a person.”

“Huh?”

“And when I contacted Milburn, I got the same response. He was polite but said that I must have him confused with someone else. Thing is, I checked flight permits filed by the Donnerjack Institute for a couple of days before the Elshie celebration and I found that one had been taken out for Milburn. The destination wasn’t listed, but the turn-around time would have been just about right for a quick jaunt to Scotland.”

“Weird.”

“Very. If it wasn’t for the fact that he bled all over the front seat of my Spinner, I’d say that in Jay MacDougal you and I had suffered a consensual hallucination.”

“Don’t tease!”

“I’m not. I’m merely expressing a point, kid.”

“Yeah.”

Link looked so depressed that Drum reached across and patted her hand.

“This isn’t an end, kid, just a delay. In the meantime, I’ve heard from you-know-who. He wants to see us tonight.”

Link shook off her depression, squared her shoulders, shifted her posture and, somehow, indefinably, seemed more male than before. Drum was impressed.

“I could use the distraction,” Link said. “Want to get dinner before?”

“The Chinese place again?”

“Yeah, I want to try their garlic eggplant.”

“Yuck.”

Jay walked beneath the spreading green of the forest giants. Thick vines, flowered red and orange and yellow, interwove the boughs so that overhead Dubhe hardly need employ any energy in his progress from tree to tree. Mizar snapped at a flying beetle, its wings polished copper and aged bronze. Birds called from hidden roosts or screeched when Jay’s progress brought him too close to an egg-filled nest. All around them was life in form fantastical and impossible, yet to Jay the jungle felt strange and somehow empty.

“Mizar, have we come to the correct site?”

“It smells so…” A creaking as the hound raised its fearsome head. “Yes… this is… Nazrat’s locus.”

Jay glanced from side to side. “It seems wrong. Too quiet? That’s not quite right, but something is missing.”

Dubhe dropped to his shoulder. “I spotted the plains through a gap in the canopy, Jay.”

“Good,” Jay said, still distracted. “Mizar, when we reach the plain would you find the trail of the phants?”

“Which… phants?”

“Tranto’s herd, if you can. Any will do. They keep tabs on each other. Even a lone bull should be able to give us directions.”

Mizar wagged his cable tail in acknowledgment. When they left the green coolness for the sunlit grasslands, he dropped his nose to the ground and began casting about. Jay, seated on a hummock in the shade, watched, still trying to place the source of the strangeness he sensed. He was no closer when Mizar gave a low bay.

“I have… phant. Blood… as well. Be care… ful.”

The boy rose and fell briskly into step behind Mizar, not even pausing as Dubhe dropped from the branches and onto his shoulder.

“We will be, Mizar. Is the blood scent fresh?”

“Very. Phant also.”

“Maybe that’s why things seem so quiet,” Jay said, not convinced. “If there’s something out here that can wound a phant…”

“Tranto,” Mizar interrupted.

“Tranto?” Jay broke into a trot. “If there’s something out here that can wound Tranto, then maybe everything else has taken cover.”

“Hope it’s not still out here,” Dubhe said.

“Yeah.”

After a time, a handful of trees closely clustered together announced the presence of a watering hole ahead. Coasting on the winds above the trees were a dozen birds that might have been called vultures except that their feathers were brilliant yellow picked out in sapphire blue. Their heads and necks, however, were bare of feathers, the naked pink skin (when added to the yellow and blue) attiring the birds with gruesome festivity given the obvious purpose of their powerfully hooked beaks and horned talons.

“Whatever it is isn’t dead,” Jay said, “or those birds would be down there right now.”

“Tranto,” Mizar repeated patiently. “I smell Tranto.”

And it was Tranto they saw as they closed the remaining distance. The ancient phant lay collapsed on his side. His grey, wrinkled hide was scored with red and blood pooled around him. Only the defiant flapping of his trunk when one of the vultures dropped within range assured them that he still lived, but each time he drove them off they retreated less and the trunk moved more slowly.

Mizar bayed, a horrid sound like the static-laden feedback of a set of poorly wired amplifiers. The vultures flapped higher, warned, but not panicked. Jay ignored them, hurrying to the phant. Up close, things looked even worse, but one thing was clear, Tranto’s opponent had not gotten away without injury. The phant’s long curving tusks were reddened with gore.

“Tranto…” Jay said, his voice breaking.

Tranto’s eye was glazed with pain, dimmed with something like madness, but he still knew Jay. He flapped his upper ear in acknowledgment. Heedless of the blood that soaked the ground, Jay knelt and brought his head near the phant’s oddly delicate mouth.

“Who did this?”

Tranto tried to speak, but only blood-flecked spittle dribbled forth. Jay placed a reassuring hand on one leg—just about the only place he could find that wasn’t terribly wounded.

“Mizar?”

The hound turned from where it had been menacing the swirling vultures. A few yellow-and-blue feathers were caught in his jagged metal teeth.

“Yes?”

“Mizar, I want you to find Nazrat for me.”

“Hard. Genius loci do… not need to be… Is here.”

“I want to talk to him, like I do to Caltrice. How can I send him a message?”

Dubhe tossed a handful of dates at one of the vultures, chortling when he scored a hit.

“It’s impossible if lie doesn’t want to hear you, but I’d bet he has at least some of his awareness extended into this area. Tranto isn’t just any proge.”

“So I should just talk to the air?”

“Why not?”

Jay shrugged. The idea was not as alien to him as it might be to someone with a more Veritean attitude toward Virtu. Still stroking Tranto’s leg, making a silent inventory of the phant’s damage, he soliloquized.

“Nazrat, we’ve met in passing before. I’m Jay Donnerjack. When I came here to play in your jungles or to talk to Tranto, I’ve praised the beauty and versatility of your site. Now, I think something’s wrong here, really wrong. You see, I can’t imagine that something could tear Tranto up like this and just walk away. I can see from Tranto’s tusks that he must have seriously hurt his opponents, but when I look about me, I don’t see any blood trails leading away. Isn’t that strange?”