Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

Just about then I heard a twig snap, and the rattling and rustling of a big animal in the scrub. I had just warning enough to unsling my slug gun and push down the safety when Babbie snuffled, and I felt the familiar, waist-high probing of his soft snout. It was the second time I had nearly shot him, and it struck me as very funny, like one of those stories the men who sell us wood tell, in which some ridiculous situation occurs and recurs. I dropped to one knee, still laughing, rubbed Babbie’s ears, and told him that I was very glad indeed to see him, as I was.

When I looked up, there was something looming above us so enormous and so dark that in that moment it seemed larger than a thunderhead. I remember (I shall never forget) seeing its long curved horns among the massed stars, and feeling that they were actually there, that when the beast moved they would extinguish stars as they might have poked out eyes. In another moment they vanished as it lowered its head to charge. I fired over Babbie’s back, and pumped the action faster than I would have thought possible, the opening and shutting of the bolt a single sound like the slamming of a door, fired again without bringing the butt to my shoulder properly, and was knocked over in literal earnest, knocked sprawling amid the sand and roots. I remember the angry rattle of Babbie’s tusks, and picking up the slug gun again and jerking the trigger without any idea whether it was pointed at the beast, at Babbie, or at my own foot, and wondering why it did not fire, too dazed to realize that I had not chambered a fresh round.

All that lasted only a second or two, I believe. I climbed to my feet and pumped the action again; and then, seeing nothing and hearing nothing except Babbie, pushed on the safety. You will accuse me of exaggeration, dearest Nettle, I know. But I actually tripped over one of the immense horns before I knew that the huge beast lay there. I nearly fell again, and would perhaps have fallen myself if I had not caught myself upon its fallen shoulder.

I had to explore it then with my hands, because it was black and lay in pitch blackness under those closely packed trees, none of which were much above five cubits high but all of which were still in full leaf in spite of the cold. I do not know what they are called, but their leaves are hard, thick, pointed, and deep green, not much longer than the second joint of my forefinger.

It was enormous, that beast, and I was still trying to grasp just how enormous it was when He-pen-sheep and his son burst out of the scrub, howling like a couple of hounds in their exultation. “Breakbull,” they said over and over. “You kill breakbull, Horn.” The son cut off the tail and tied it to my thong belt; it made me feel a complete fool, but that is their custom and I could not have taken it off or even implied that it was unwelcome without offending them. I thought then about what that other Horn had said concerning the customs of his race, and wondered what I had let us in for. Our own differ greatly from one town to the next, as everyone knows. Those of another race (I thought) must be very peculiar indeed. As they are.

At this point I have told you everything of interest. I am going to make the rest very short and so finish writing about all this before I go to bed.

He-pen-sheep and his son skinned the breakbull in the dark with a little not very valuable help from me. I cut off a haunch, and tried to shoulder it without getting too much blood on the slug gun (which I had hung across my back with the butt up), at which I was not very successful. The two of them carried the skin back to their lean-to, and it was so heavy that the son fell once under its weight and was deeply shamed by it. As for me, I brought back ten times more meat than was needed to feed all seven of us. I say seven because Babbie ate at least as much as the hungriest, who was without a doubt your loving husband.

I have been tempted to omit this next observation, and have already pushed my account past it; but whether it fits here or not, I am going to tell you something very strange. On the way back to He-pen-sheep’s camp, he and his son often had a.good deal of difficulty working their huge roll of hide through the tangle of scrub that had obstructed me so often. I, who stood taller than either of them and had the massive haunch (it must have weighed as much as the twins) over my shoulder, should have been at least as inconvenienced by the angular, wind-twisted trees.

But I was not. My face and arms, which were already a mass of scratches from their limbs, were never scratched again. Although the haunch I carried was brushed now and again by leaves, it was never caught, not even momentarily. I cannot explain this. The limbs certainly did not move aside for me. The sky was gray by the time we were finished skinning the breakbull, and I would certainly have seen them if they had, and heard them, too. I can only say that it seemed to me that no matter in which direction I looked, I could see a clear path for me and my burden. And when I went forward, that was what it proved to be.

We reached camp about sunrise. She-pick-berry leaped up shouting and woke her sick daughter and Seawrack, which neither appeared to mind. We ate, and although all of us ate a great deal I am sure I ate the most of all, so much that He-pen-sheep was open in his astonishment and admiration. Even the daughter, who had been so ill the evening before, ate as much as would make a good big serving on one of our big dinner plates back on Lizard.

Afterward, She-pick-berry showed us how she would smoke the rest, making a sort of rack for thin strips of meat out of green twigs. We agreed that He-pen-sheep and his son would help Seawrack and me by bringing as much meat as they could carry to the sloop. In it return, they would receive the hide (which She-pick-berry was already scraping by the time we left their camp) and the remainder of the breakbull.

Escorted by Babbie, we four returned to the carcass, cut loads of meat, and made our way through the scrub to the sea, striking the beach only a short walk from the sloop. Krait was aboard and greeted our arrival with ill-natured sarcasm, twitting Seawrack and me for being as bloody as inhumi and laughing inordinately at his own witticisms. Before we realized that Patera Quetzal had been an inhumu, Nettle, I would have thought that a sense of humor was an exclusively human possession. Associating with Krait made me wish more than once that it were so; he had an overdeveloped sense of humor, and as ugly a one as I have ever met with in all my travels. Since then I have learned that the Neighbors, who treated me with so much solemnity that night, are notorious for theirs.

When He-pen-sheep and his son had helped us get the sloop back into the water, and had waded out to her with the loads of meat that they had brought and washed themselves in the sea, he drew me aside. Indicating Krait with a jerk of his head, he told me, “No like,” and I acknowledged that I did not like him either.

“You beat, Horn?”

I shook my head.

“Big beat,” he advised me. Then, “You talk Neighbor?”

I nodded.

“What say?”

I considered. At no time had the other Horn or any other Neighbor asked me to keep our conversation confidential, or put me under any sort of oath. “We changed blood,” I told He-pen-sheep. “I,” I touched my chest, “for you and all the other men, and for all the women and all the children, too. The Neighbor for all the Neighbors.”

He-pen-sheep stared at me intently.

“Because I spoke for you, I can tell you what we said. We agreed that where men are, Neighbors can come as well.” I waved my arm at the horizon, indicating (I hope) that I intended the whole whorl. “They can visit us in peace and friendship.”

“Big good!” He nodded enthusiastically.