Филип Фармер: The Stone God Awakens

The procession walked swiftly across the rolling hills, following a path which war parties and hunting parties had used for generations. There were many huge evergreens and birches and oaks along here but not so many that they constituted a forest. There were birds: bluejays, crows, ravens, sparrows, an emerald-and-honey hummingbird; the fox-red or sable-black winged squirrels; a flash of grey which was a fox; the pointed bright-eyed head of a weasel-like creature looking around the trunk of a tree fifty feet above them; a red rat scuttling across a fallen log; and, high on a hill some fifty yards to their right, a brown colossus that sat up and stared. This was a bear that was totally vegetarian and would not bother anybody as long as he was left alone. He ate corn and the produce of gardens if these were left unguarded, but he could be run off easily enough.

Ulysses breathed in the cool blue sky with his eyes and the cool fresh air with his lungs. The great healthy trees, the healthy bird and animal life, the green everywhere, the absence of polluted air, the feeling of having plenty of elbow room, these combined to make him happy for the moment. He could forget the ache of knowing that he might be the only human alive. He could forget. and then he stopped. Behind him, the standard-bearer yelled out an order, the drumming and fluting ceased, and the warriors quit their murmuring talk.

He was missing something. What?

Not what. Whom?

He turned and spoke to Aytheera. "Awina, your daughter. Where is she?"

Aytheera's face was expressionless. He said, "Lord?"

"I want Awina to come with me. She is my voice and my eyes. I need her."

"I told her to stay, my Lord, because females do not go on important trips between villages, neither on peace nor war expeditions."

"You will have to get accustomed to change," Ulysses said. "Send someone for her. We wait."

Aytheera looked strangely at him but obeyed, lisama, the fastest warrior, ran back to the village, a mile away. After a while, he came trotting back with Awina a few paces behind him. She wore a four-cornered cap with three feathers and had a triple loop of massive green beads around her neck. She ran as a human female runs, and when she slowed down to a fast walk a hundred yards away, she swayed as a human female sways. Her black ears and face, tail, lower arms and legs shimmered in the sun with an undercoat of pale red, and her white fur glowed as if it were snow under a bright spring sun. Her great dark blue eyes were on him, and she was smiling, showing the widely separated stiletto teeth.

When she got to him, she went down on her knees and kissed his hand, saying, "My Lord, I wept because you had left me behind."

"Your tears dried fast enough," he said. He liked to think that she had cried, but he could not be sure if she was exaggerating or saying what she thought he would like to hear. These noble savages were as capable of dissimulation as any civilised peoples. Moreover, should he want her to become so emotionally attached to him? Such a bond could lead to a more intimate feeling, the consequences of which he had fantasised. The images both stimulated and repulsed him.

She took her place at his right and was silent for a long time. Then she began to talk hesitantly, and, after a while, she chattered along as amusingly and as informatively as ever. He felt much happier; the sense of loss had evaporated into the clear air and bright sun.

They marched all day, stopping now and then to rest or to eat. There were enough creeks and small rivers to furnish them all the water they needed. The Wufea, though they may have been descended from cats, bathed whenever they got a chance. They also licked themselves all over in true cat fashion. They were a clean people as far as their own bodies were concerned but were indifferent to the pests in their villages, the cockroaches, flies, and other bugs. And, though they buried their refuse, they were not neat about cleaning up after their dogs and pigs and other animals they kept for pets or for food.

In the late evening, Ulysses, hot, sweaty and fatigued, decided they would camp for the night by a creek.

The water was fairly cool and was so clear that he could see the fish scooting along its bottom twenty feet deep. He lay on a fallen tree that stuck out over the creek and watched the fish for a long while. Then he took off his clothes and went swimming while the Wufea and Wagarondit watched him closely as they always did when he was nude. He wondered if they were secretly repulsed by his general lack of fur and the distribution of hair elsewhere. Perhaps not. He could not be expected to be as they, since he was, after all, a god.

When he came out, all others, except for posted guards and Awina, bathed. She dried him off with a piece of fur and then asked permission to go in also. When they had all come out, he looked down into the water from the log. The fish were scared away. But a hundred yards up, he found them again. He used a telescoping pole of some unfamiliar lightweight wood, a line composed of gut, and a bone hook with a worm which Awina dug up for him. It was a thick-bodied creature, as long as his hand, blood-red and with four great false eyes composed of three concentric circles of white, blue and green.

He cast twelve times with no success. On the thirteenth, a fish struck. Thereafter, he had to play it by the gut itself, since the line threatened to tear loose from the pole. The fish was only ten inches long, but it was very powerful and fought savagely. It took him at least twenty minutes to tire it out. When he pulled it in and saw the silvery body with scarlet and pale green spots, staring yellow eyes and short cartilaginous "whiskers," he felt even happier. According to Awina, who carried it off to cook it, the iipawafa was delicious. And it was.

That night, lying in his sleeping bag, looking up at the huge green, blue and white moon through the branches of an evergreen, he thought that he lacked only two things to make him completely happy. One was a deep drink of some good dark German or Danish beer or top-rate bourbon. The second was a woman who would love him and whom he could love.

Before he realised what he had done, he found Awina's furry hand in his and coming close to his mouth. He had unconsciously reached over and picked it up and was about to kiss it.

"My Lord!" Awina said in a tremulous voice.

He did not reply. He gently put her hand back on the top of her sleeping bag and turned away.

But she said, "Look!" and he sat up and stared through the branches at the thing at which she was pointing.

Black and winged, a silhouette only, he flapped across the moon and then was gone.

"What was that?"

"I did not know that any were around," she said. "It has been some time since. that was an opeawufeapauea."

"A winged thinking person — hairless," he murmured, translating into English.

"The Thululiki," she added.

"Are they dangerous?"

"You do not remember?"

"Would I ask if I did?"

"Forgive me, Lord. I do not mean to anger you. No, they are not generally dangerous. Neither we nor the Wagarondit our enemies kill them. They are of great service to all."

Ulysses questioned her some more and then went to sleep. He dreamed of bats with human faces.

Two days later, they came to the first Wagarondit village. Long before, the drums had announced that they had been seen. Singing Bear occasionally glimpsed the scouts as they ran from tree to tree or peeked out from behind bushes. They followed along a broad and deep creek which held a number of black and white fish about three feet long. He investigated and decided they were not fish but mammals: pygmy porpoises. Awina said that the Wagarondit held them sacred and only killed one once a year at a ceremony. The Wufea did not consider them sacred, but since these were found only in enemy territory, they never bothered them. If a Wufea raiding party killed one, and the Wagarondit came across the body, they would know that there were Wufea in the area.