Philip Farmer - The Gates of Creation

Again, the animals vanished. They reappeared, four in number. Two fudgers, two chronowolves. The chase was on, not only in space but in the strange gray corridors of backwards-forwards time.

Another simultaneous jump into the tempolimbo. Wolff ran towards a boulder around which grew a number of bushes. He hurled himself down and then peered between the bushes.

Seven again. This time a wolf had come out of wherever he had been just behind his quarry. He hurled himself forward, and his jaws closed around the neck of the fudger. There was a loud crack; the fudger dropped dead.

Seven living, and one dead. A fudger had gone back and then forward again.

The living vanished. Evidently the wolf did not intend to stay behind and eat his kill.

Then six were jumping around the plain. Savagely, a wolf bit another wolf on the neck, and the attacked crumpled in death.

Nothing for three seconds. Wolff ran out and threw himself down on the ground. Although not hidden behind anything this time, he hoped that his motionlessness, combined with the terror of the fudgers and the bloodlust of the wolves, would make them not notice him.

Another wolf had been born out of time’s womb. Parthenogenesis of chronoviators.

Two wolves launched themselves at each other, while the third watched them, and the fudgers hopped around in apparent confusion.

The observer predator became participant, not in the struggle between his fellows, but in the hunt. He caught a fudger by the throat as it hurtled by him in its blind panic.

A fudger and a wolf died.

The living flickered out again. When they came back into his sight, a wolf gripped a fudger’s neck and cracked it.

Wolff slowly rose to his feet. At the exact moment that one of the wolves died, he hurled his stone at the winner. It must have caught the motion out of the corner of its eyes, since it vanished just before the stone would have struck. And when it shot out of the chute of time, it was going as swiftly as its four legs would take it towards the exit.

“I’m sorry to deprive you of the spoils of victory,” Wolff called out after it. “But you can resume the hunt elsewhere.”

He went to call the other Lords and to tell them that their luck had changed. Six animals would fill their bellies and furnish a little over for the next day.

There came the tune again when the Lords had been without food for three days. They were gaunt, their cheeks hollow, their eyes couched within dark and deep caves, their bellies advancing towards their spines. That day Wolff sent them out in pairs to hunt. He had intended to go alone but Vala insisted that he take Luvah with him. She would hunt by herself. Wolff asked her why she wanted it that way, and she replied that she did not care to be accompanied by only one man.

“You think you might become the victim of a cannibal?” Wolff said.

“Exactly,” she said. “You know that if we continue to go hungry, it’s inevitable that we’ll start eating one another. It may even have been planned by Urizen. He would very much enjoy seeing us kill one another and stuff our bellies with our own flesh and blood.”

“Have it your own way,” Wolff said. He left with Luvah to explore a series of side-canyons. The two sighted a number of fudgers eating from bushes and began the patient, hours-long creeping upon them. They came within an inch of success. The stone, thrown by Wolff, went past the head of his intended victim. After that, all was lost. The fudgers did not even bother to take refuge in tune but leaped away and were lost in another canyon.

Wolff and Luvah continued to look until near the time for the moon to bring another night of hunger-torn sleeplessness. When they got back to the meeting-place, they found the others, looking very perturbed. Palamabron and his hunting-companion, Enion, were missing.

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Tharmas said, “but I’m too exhausted to go looking for the damn fools.”

“Maybe we should,” Vala said. “They might have had some luck and even now be stuffing themselves with good meat, instead of sharing it with us.”

Tharmas cursed. However, he refused to search for them. If they had had luck, he said, he would know it when he next saw their faces. They would not be able to hide their satisfaction from him. And he would kill them for their selfishness and greed.

“They wouldn’t be doing anything you wouldn’t if you had their chance,” Wolff said. “What’s all the uproar about? We don’t know that they’ve caught anything. After all, it was only a suggestion by Vala. There’s no proof, not the slightest.”

They grumbled and cursed but soon were asleep with utter weariness.

Wolff slept, too, but awoke in the middle of the night. He thought he had heard a cry in the distance. He sat up and looked at the others. They were all there, except for Palamabron and Enion.

Vala sat up also. She said, “Did you hear something, brother? Or was it the wailing of our bellies?”

“It came from upriver,” he said. He rose to his feet. “I think I shall go look.”

She said, “I’ll go with you. I cannot sleep any longer. The thought that they might be feasting keeps me angry and awake.”

“I do not think the feasting will be on the little hoppers,” he said.

She said, “You think…”

“I do not know. You spoke of the possibility. It becomes stronger every day, as we become weaker and hungrier.”

He picked up his stick, and they walked along the edge of the river. They had little difficulty seeing where they were going. The moon brought only a half-darkness. Even though the walls of the canyon deepened the twilight, there was still enough light for them to proceed with confidence.

So it was that they saw Palamabron before he saw them. His head appeared for a moment above a boulder near the wall of the canyon. His profile was presented to them, then he disappeared. On bare feet, they crept towards him. The wind carried to them the noise he was making. It sounded as if he were striking one stone against another.

“Is he trying to make a fire?” Vala whispered.

Wolff did not answer. He was sick, since he could think of only one reason why Palamabron would want to build a fire. When he came to the huge rock behind which Palamabron was, he hesitated. He did not want to see what he thought he must when he came around the boulder.

Palamabron had his back to them. He was on his knees before a pile of branches and leaves and was knocking a piece of flint against a rock that was heavy in iron.

Wolff breathed a sigh of relief. The body beside Palamabron was that of a fudger. Where was Enion?

Wolff came up silently behind Palamabron, his stick raised high. He spoke loudly. “Well, Palamabron?”

The Lord gave a short scream and dived forward over the firepile. He rolled and came up on his feet, facing them. He held a very crude flint knife.

“It’s mine,” he snarled. “I killed it, and I want it. I have to have it. I’ll die if I don’t get to eat!”

“So will we all,” Wolff said. “Where is your cousin?”

Palamabron spat and said, “The beast! He’s no cousin of mine. How should I know where he is? Why should I care?”

“You went out with him,” Wolff said.

“I don’t know where he is. We got separated while we were hunting.”

“We thought we heard a cry,” Vala said.

“It was a fudger, I think,” Palamabrcn said. “Yes, it was. The one I killed a little while ago. I found it sleeping and killed it and it cried out as it died.”

“Maybe,” Wolff said. He backed away from Palamabron until he was at a safe distance. He continued on up the rivershore. Before he had gone a hundred yards, he saw the hand lying beside a boulder. He went around it and found Enion. The back of his head was crushed in; beside him lay the bloody rock that had killed him.