Stairway to Forever (27 page)

Its color was so dark a brown as to look almost black, which caused the two-inch-wide white stripe down the length of its spine to stand out in startling contrast. The long, thick horns were a yellowish-white, save at the sharp-pointed tips where they were shiny black. Under the glossy hide, the creature was a mass of thick bones, steely sinew and rolling muscles, a good six feet in height at the withers, with the big head carried even higher, the cud-chewing mouth and w

Within that huge, weighty, very powerful and vital body, Fitz noted how much concentration was required on the part of his host, Seos, to maintain his creation in its present shape and to prevent his own mind from becoming submerged in the simpler mind of the beast. Fitz, from his vantage-point, could understand how such a thing was done but discovered that his own, human mind owned no words or even speakable concepts to explain it.

Then the young aurochs bull set out across the rolling plain at a slow trot, leaving the "leopard" to her bloody feast just inside the confines of the thicket, admonishing him telepathically with "Have your fun with those heifers and cows, brother-mine, but be

careful, too; big as you now are, you're still not as big as some of the king-bulls I've seen, here and there. There still are but few enough of us and I fear that our sire would be most wroth were I to arrive back upon our island with only your well-horned body."

In great good spirits, Seos replied, "You be careful, too, my sister-mate. That form you now inhabit is such as to set any male leopard to full arousal, and I think our sire might be equally wroth were you to throw before him a litter of furry, fanged and clawed grand-get. Hahahaha."

Despite the flippancies of the exchanges, Fitz knew that there was real and abiding love between the sister and brother (who also were sexual mates, in the ages-old tradition of their hybrid race) and both love and awesome respect for their sire, Keronnos, ruler of their small group of Elder Ones-human hybrids, resident on the rocky but verdant island in the midst of the sea.

The mind of Seos was as an open book to Fitz, and the man-bull was completely oblivious to the presence or delvings of the "visitor" within him. In the memories of Seos, Fitz could see that island—soaring peaks flung high above broad, long plains, little, deep-green glens between hills, large and smaller streams of crystal-clear water flowing from the montane springs to cascade down rocks and race down hillsides and flow upon the plains and feed the lakes and ponds before finding ways to the purple sea— was able to know that, before Keronnos and his kin had come upon and settled it, there had never been humans or even primates thereon. Even now, after the passages of hundreds of winters, there were few on the large island—though only a bit over twenty miles average width, the island's length was more than eight times that distance—for, though the hy-

brids lived very long as compared to pure-strain humans, their birthrates were very low.

In hopes of partially rectifying these problems, Keronnos and all of the others had taken to seeking out among the smaller clans and tribes of humans in the lands and islands scattered around and about the sea, using their inborn mental talents to try to spy out supposedly pure humans and find those who might own within them enough of hybrid descent and undeveloped but developable talents to make decent breeding-stock. Those chosen had been taken up and borne back to the island, set down upon it and given all that was needful for them to lead happy, healthy and comfortable lives—hunting, fishing, gathering wild plants, breeding kine and sowing crops in the rich, volcanic soil of the island—while the hybrids got children upon them or from them, guided them into breeding among themselves in ways that would concentrate and enhance their own heritages of talents, and undertook the awakenings and training and discipline of the ever more talented young.

Even so, people of any strain still numbered few upon the island and the hybrids still flew out over the surrounding lands and islands in search of promising humans for the carefully controlled breedings they had undertaken.

But this day, this trip to this land, Fitz realized, was not such a search-mission, it was rather in the nature of a romp for the sibling mates, Seos and Ehra, a vacation from out the tight strictures of their sire and the other teachers of the young for, although mature enough for most purely-human pursuits, even for breeding, as hybrids their mental and emotional maturity lagged far behind their bodies' so that, in effect, they were only over-grown children. Not only did they naturally embody all the faults and failings

of human children of similar mental and emotional development, they could add to them superhuman abilities and, as their sire and other mentors knew only too well, this combination could, without discipline, sometimes produce devastating if not deadly results, so such unsupervised jaunts into distant lands were rare and precious to the hybrid young.

Seos made a good, believable bull, for it was far from his first inhabitance of a bovine body. Where not sown with grain and other crops, the plains of the island gave graze to herds of cattle which, although somewhat smaller, less rangy and much less ferocious, were still obviously the near-kindred of the huge, fierce wild oxen that still roamed many of the lands surrounding the sea. Therefore, Seos had been able to observe, move among and model the cattle almost since his birth.

Fitz could see in the mind and memories of Seos that there were other beasts and birds he enjoyed— sometimes he became a huge eagle or a monstrous white swan, sometimes a fierce mountain ram, once, a wolf, again, a bear or a boar or a desert lion. On occasion, he and one of his brothers had become long, sleek, black-and-white porpoises and swum through the sea off the island, chasing schools of plump fishes into the waiting nets of human fishers from one of the island communities.

But of them all, among all creatures he had been, Seos still most preferred being that which he now was—three-quarters of a ton of big bones, muscles, sinews, speed, ferocity and such horn-tipped strength that not even the hungriest lion, the biggest bear would dare to attack him. Indeed, of all the predators in nearby lands, the mature aurochs in his prime and uninjured seldom fell to any save the increasingly rare long-tooth cats, pack-hunters such as wolves

or hyaenas or humans, or the almost-extinct dragons. But a herd of aurochs could usually stand off and drive away even these.

The big ox that was Seos-Fitz moved slowly, sampling a few mouthfuls of the herbiage along his way, tail swishing and skin twitching against the voracious, blood-hungry flies that swarmed about him. Along with the mind of his unsuspecting host, Fitz too was aware that, for all his impressive looks, the created bullbody was not quite solid, durable, for the parts of the doe not considered easily edible by Ehra in her leopard-body had simply not provided enough building materials of the proper kinds for Seos to use in creating a good, workmanshiplike construction.

Abruptly, as the bull crested a low-crowned hillock, he could first smell, then see, just what he needed. At some time within the last few days, a largish hoofed animal—either a good-sized antelope or a short-necked giratfid, from the appearance of what tin- killer-predators and scavengers had left of it—had been slain and mostly devoured in the tiny hollow trisecting two of the grassy knolls. Now, all the flesh and organs were gone, as too was most of the hide. All that remained, presently being gnawed at and worried by a brace of jackals, were some of the larger bones, three hooves and a pair of long, pointed horns still attached to the remainder of the skull.

A snort and a few steps of a mock charge, huge head and black-tipped horns lowered in a businesslike manner, were sufficient to send the jackals scurrying up the opposite slope. Fitz wondered to himself what the matted-haired scavengers thought to watch their feast silently and utterly disappear into nothingness.

At length, everything finally absorbed into the created bovine body, the bull that was Seos and Fitz descended the knoll, trotted across the stained, much disturbed level surface whereon so much feasting had so recently taken place, then set his now more solid bones and muscles to breasting the upward way, the two small jackals scuttling before him, ratty tails tucked between thin shanks. Fitz realized that, had Seos intended to spend more than a few hours in the creation, he would have sought around and about, located more carnal refuse and picked over kills and used them to give full size, weight and solidity to the bull; but this was but a romp, an outing, for he and Ehra must fly back to the island soon enough.

The bull, unlike Seos, did not see colors, only shades of grey, and his vision was only clear within a relatively short distance, but his olfactory sense was exceptionally keen, as too was his hearing; even from this far away, his ears still could detect the snarls of the Ehra-leopard, but even had the Seos part of the bull-mind not known just what the cat was, the animal-mind could identify the sounds for the warnings of a feeding feline, not the coughs and growls of a hunting-stalking-attacking cat. And besides, no mere leopard would have dared to essay killing an aurochs bull.

No, he need fear precious few creatures in most lands. True, the smell of lion had lain heavy about that kill on the remains of which the pair of jackals had been gnawing, but having fed so recently, it was doubtful if any save a very large pride would be hunting again so soon. Long-tooth cats liked hillier country than this, as too did the most of the land-dragons, while water-dragons never were seen this far from the sea or at least a sizable river, riverine swamp or deep lake. Smaller predators were only

dangerous to such as Seos now "was" in numbers and could often be heard or scented from a distance, especially the two-legged packs.

Fitz could see in Seos' memories the two types of "dragons"— the water-dragon was a large crocodile and the land-dragon looked like nothing more than a lizard, but what a lizard it was. Could Seos' memories be believed, the thing must have been as long as the crocodile—between twenty and thirty feet!—and, although not apparently armored, of a lighter and more slender physique and with a long, tapering tail. The thing stood at least four feet at the shoulder, with a toothy, snaky head on three feet of thick, dewlapped neck, and every line of its scaly body spelled speed. Seos also recalled that there had been a related species—though larger—on the island when first the hybrids had settled it, but as the things were an ever-present danger to anything that lived and breathed, they had hunted them down and completely wiped the species out there. Pure-strain humans feared and hated the things, too, and banded together to exterminate them whenever or wherever they were found, so the monsters were becoming exceedingly rare, rarer even than the long-tooth cats, in lands inhabited by humans or hybrids, nor did it help their chances of survival that the larger of the monsters had an inborn proclivity to chase down, kill and eat the smaller whenever they could.

The young bull had been moving into the wind, deliberately, so that he was ever downwind of the herd and could scent it before his own scent was available to them. This was the cautious thing to do, for if the king-bull grazed with or close to the herd on this day, he was certain to take rather ferocious exception to a strange, younger contender for the favors of his cows and heifers. And it developed to be

as well that he had so done, for closer in to the herd he smelled, not the scent of a mature king-bull, but the unexpected—the reek of two-legs, men—and, when he was come close enough to actually see the cattle, it was clear that they were some generations from the pure, wild strain. These had obviously been bred smaller, with shorter legs and horns, though still were they closely enough related to their larger, wild progenitors that their scent was the same.

Here and there about the far-flung periphery of the herd stood stripling boys and a few older men, some of them leaning on the shafts of long, stone-tipped spears, chewing on stems of grass and watching that their charges did not graze too far from the rest of the herd, while keeping a sharp eye out for any possible dangers.

As the Seos-bull came within sight of the herd, so did he himself come within sight of some of the watchers and these, too far away to themselves do anything about him, signalled to those closer with a series of meaningful whistles. To them, the advent of a wild bull was as dangerous and serious a menace as the appearance of a lion or bear or wolf, for the very last thing they wanted was to have the original size, hornspread and savagery bred back into their carefully-nurtured strain of cattle.

Running at full tilt around one end of the herd, an older man—likely about forty, thought the hybrid part of the Seos-creature, with grey in his hair and beard, a profusion of puckered, off-color scars on his hairy limbs and torso, missing an eye and the most of an ear and moving with a slight but very noticeable limp, of late middle age for a pure-strain human— took command of the striplings nearby, with a few panted words and gestures, he rapidly formed them into a semicircle facing uphill and the strange bull,

each of them now with a tall shield on his left arm and his spear presented and menacing. Then he set his troops in motion with a harsh, barked word, advancing on the deadly-dangerous interloper, hopeful of running him off without a fight, but certainly prepared to do whatever it took doing to keep him from their herd.

One of the striplings at the tip of the offensive crescent stopped long enough to take a hide sling from round his neck, load it, whirl it and accurately send a round stone against the near side of the head and the Seos-bull with such force as to bring a bellow of pain from the bovine creature. Seos knew that he had but two options, then: fight and kill all or most of the herd-guards—for they stood no chance of killing him since he was not real, fully-formed, flesh-and-blood, only a clever semblance of a beast—or beat a hasty retreat. He chose the latter course, turning and cantering off in the direction of a stand of forest from which came the good, cool smell of fresh water.