Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

“Whoever they were chasing was a big fella,” Big Ears noted. “Bigger’n me, maybe. Whoever they was they didn’t know nothin’ ’bout keepin’ out of sight or coverin’ tracks, that’s for sure.”

Littlefeet nodded. “Yeah, but he sure thought he did,” the small boy noted. “He was just kinda creepin’ through here. Lookit! You wonder how any grownup coulda lived long enough to, well, grow up, as clumsy as this. Where’d this one come from, I wonder?”

“Dunno, and I ain’t gonna track that much back, not this late in the day. But he sure was goin’ to the Knob, and that’s one place I sure don’t wanna go, even in daylight.”

Littlefeet snorted. “You scared of that? Hey, that’s just a big old twisty rock like all the rest.”

“Ain’t what I heard,” Big Ears insisted. “I hear it’s got the ghosts of a thousand of the ancestors and that it moans and talks and tries to sucker you in.”

“Yeah? Well, I can see how the wind could play funny tricks in a thing shaped like that. Spook a lot of dumb folks. I heard a lot about devil spirits and ancestor stuff, but I ain’t seen nothin’ but Hunters and some powerful mean people and I been along the plains and to and from the rivers and lakes awhile. Ain’t nobody else heard ’em, neither! I checked! They all heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody whose best friend got it straight. Besides, if that’s the ghosts of our ancestors up there, why’n heck didn’t they get them damn Hunters? Huh? Come on. Sun’s gettin’ low and I want to get this done and get back.”

The trail was so plain there was nobody born who could have missed it or failed to follow it. The quarry had at least been a little devious, zigzagging back and forth and even backtracking once or twice, but he was so inept at concealing his progress that it had made no difference. For all his efforts, he might as well have gone straight in yelling and singing.

Big Ears eyed with more than a little suspicion the large rocky hill that stood out so prominent and lonely in the otherwise dead flat grasslands. Up close it didn’t look so much like a monster or spook, but it did look a lot bigger and higher, too, and with no obvious way up.

“Here’s where they went,” Littlefeet noted, pointing. “There’s some kind of ledge up there, maybe twice my height. See it?”

“Yeah, sort of. You seein’ them chalky dirt spills, huh?”

Littlefeet nodded. Big Ears wasn’t incompetent, only overcautious—which was possibly the reason the Father had assigned him as Littlefeet’s partner.

Littlefeet tensed, went into a coiled stoop while keeping his eyes firmly on the ledge, then jumped with all his power. He was a strong runner, whose legs were quite powerful; he didn’t make it to the ledge, but he did make it close enough that his hands got a grasp up there, and he was able to pull himself up the rest of the way. His hands were a little scuffed and his arms hurt, but he quickly got over that and looked down at Big Ears.

“It’s a kind of trail in the rock, leading up!” he called down. “You want to try and get up here? If that guy they were chasin’ made it, you sure can! Throw me my spear, first, and yours, too, if you’re comin’.”

Big Ears hesitated for what seemed like a very long time, weighing the risks and benefits, then sighed and said, “Oh, all right. Get back. I’m a lot taller’n you!”

Being almost a head taller did help, although he, too, found the going took every muscle he had. He pulled himself up and over onto the ledge, then lay there a moment, getting back his wind. Finally, sensing his partner wasn’t exactly standing over him, he turned, looked around, and got up fast. “Littlefeet?”

“Come on! I don’t want it to get dark on us here!” his friend called from what seemed higher as well as farther away. Big Ears muttered a series of curses under his breath, picked up his spear where Littlefeet had left it, and started following the trail.

And it was a trail, too, or at least a path, clearly made long ago by somebody for some reason. It spiraled around the big rock, taking him gently upward. It was still pretty steep, and he found himself breathing hard. He was just about to sit and take a break when he came upon Littlefeet and the corpse.

It was a particularly grisly scene, even for two who had seen a lot of ugly deaths. They had hacked him open like animals, and there were blood and parts of guts all over the place. It was pretty tough even figuring out his looks; the skin on his face had been almost filleted off, and the eyes were gouged out as well. And it stunk.

“Notice anything wild about the guy?” Littlefeet asked Big Ears, just sitting to one side on a rock outcrop and staring.

“Huh? Other than the fact that they tortured and ate half of him? No.”

“No tattoos. No marks on the skin we can see at all. No sign he ever wore rings or stuff, either. The hair’s in a kind of fashion I never saw, and, well, what you can make out just don’t look right. Don’t look like nobody I ever heard of, but he looks somehow familiar, like. I can’t figure out how, though.”

Big Ears studied the mess but came no closer. “I think I know,” he said softly.

“Huh?”

“Remember the pictures in the lockets? The Family Chest? That kind of hair, that sort of face—it’s like them.”

Littlefeet squinted and looked again. “You know, you’re right. The guy looks like one of the ancestors. You don’t think any of ’em survived, do you? I mean, like some kind of underground colony or something? I heard stories…”

“Now it’s you with the stories,” Big Ears responded, throwing the smaller one’s logic back at him. “Just stories. Ain’t nobody survived the Titans. Nobody ’cept folks like us. Jeez, I mean, if even a fire in the dry season can bring ’em, you know nobody’s runnin’ none of them old things that took magic power. That’d bring a Titan ball faster’n anything.”

“Help me turn him over,” Littlefeet said, approaching the corpse. “I want to see his back. I think it should be kinda still together from the looks of him.”

Big Ears almost gagged. “You mean touch him? That?”

“Sure. His spirit’s gone to the land of the ancestors now. Ain’t nothin’ but dead, rotting meat. Come on. He’s too heavy and too stuck in his own dried shit for me to do it alone.”

Revulsion sweeping through him, Big Ears did participate sufficiently to let his spear be the lever that turned the torso over. When it did, the head came loose and rolled a short distance, making things even uglier.

“What I thought,” Littlefeet commented. “C’mon. Let’s get back.”

“What you thought? What the hell did you think to do this? There wasn’t nothin’ there but a bare back!”

“A red back. I seen it before on a couple Family members who were hurt bad and hid in the caves for a couple weeks to heal. When they come back out, one or two days of sun, they looked like that. `Sunburned,’ they called it. I noticed it on the shoulders and some of the face. I couldn’t be sure with all this blood and crap, but the back wasn’t touched by that.”

“Sunburned? What the hell you mean? Red, yeah, but…”

“Ain’t nobody burn like that guy did. You burn like that, you’re dead. But this guy burned! So there may be some truth to them rumors after all. I mean, where’s the only place where the sun don’t never get to you?”

Big Ears saw his point. “Underground… Jeez! But what was he doin’ here?”

“Who knows? No way to figure it now. But lookit his fingers on that one hand, there. Smooth and nice as a baby’s, even with the scuffing. This guy didn’t live like we do, didn’t work like we do.”