The Captive (8 page)

They are holding me between them again. We descend into a cellar by way of an outdoor entrance, down some cement stairs into a wet, cool place under the house. I  extend my spatial sense, scanning the cellar area. There is nothing living there except some field mice just inside one broken window. The boy is gathering boards now. He talks about an old mattress upstairs. I am dizzy and my mind is slipping into gray spaces so that I am losing track of time. I must hold on until I find out if these people will obey me. The girl still has her arm around my waist as I stand leaning against a wall. The boy comes down the stairs that splinter and crack as he steps on them. He is dragging something, a mattress, which he puts on the boards in a corner. They help me to lie on the musty smelling old padding. The smell is disagreeable, but it is distant and unimportant. It is of no matter. I can rest now. There is a gray space before I regain my hold, and I see that the young people are still standing beside me.

When you go home
, I am telling them,
you will speak to no one about me. If you tell, they will come and kill me, and I am a friendly creature to man. I will not harm you. Tell no one. And you must help me by bringing water and food. Small animals, chickens, lambs, even cooked food, although I need the fresh, whole animal food now to help the healing. Will you do these things?

I see their heads nod. I extort another promise from them, and they nod again. I observe them with my spatial sense, listen to their breathing, catch their scents. But I cannot hold the concentration. I am going to lose hold in a moment. I must simply take the chance. I drop my hold on them, and see them visibly flinch.

They are backing away in the dark cellar, and I realize they cannot see me but can only sense my presence now that I am not helping them. I can smell their fear coming out strongly now. They are not speaking, but they reach the cellar door and go up the concrete steps quickly. I reach out to them, listening for their words. They have said nothing, and they are afraid. I do not know if they will bring people to kill me, but I am almost too weak to stop them now. Perhaps if they do I could shift at the last minute - but I know that would be impossible. A man would quickly die in my condition. But I can no longer hold to my consciousness,  and as I hear the car doors slam shut and the car roar down the lane, I fall into grayness.

I awake with the aroma of cooked food making my mouth drool. It is light, and a shaft of sunlight stands serene in the doorway. Beside the mattress is a tin plate with a great yellow heap of scrambled eggs on it. There are strips of bacon across the top and half a dozen slices of brown bread at the side. An enamel jug of water stands next to the plate. I extend my senses to see if this is not some sort of trap. The house is deserted, and although I cannot extend my perceptions  through the cement walls, I can hear that there is nothing breathing or moving anywhere near the old house. I feel childish tears in my eyes. And then I eat the meal, devouring everything in great gulps, washing it down with the cold well water. My stomach rumbles with the unaccustomed luxury of this prepared food. Belatedly, I hope that some undetectable  and insidious poison has not been placed in the food, but I was too hungry to really care. I feel the serious lapse in my precautions, but in the next instant it all becomes laughable. I have put my life in the hands of two young people who are at best unknown quantities, at worst my executioners, and to worry about my security in such  circumstances is arrogant nonsense.

***

The weather grows steadily on toward a hot summer. Each night the breeze coming across my bed from the broken  window over to the cellar doorway is warmer, less of the day's heat being lost, and each dawn, as the sun slides along the white cement wall beside the steps until it stands full upon the dusty, littered floor in its golden rectangle, I feel the warmth of the earth increasing. I have been in this cellar for a week, and I have felt the bones begin to knit, the muscles still holding until I feel it possible to relax one or another of them in turn. The leg is not usable yet, and there are still swollen places in some joints and the healing lacerations on my chest and abdomen, but the broken wrist has almost stopped hurting, and the other arm is good enough for some tasks. My head and back, the two uncertainties  in my attempts at self healing, are apparently coming along nicely, although much of my back is tender and I have discovered that I lost a chunk out of one ear.

None of my senses seems impaired, and I enjoy each morning reaching out into the weed grown yard and pulling in a rabbit or ground squirrel for breakfast. When Stanley or Barbara come to bring me something now, they most often toss it down the stairs without coming into the cellar. For the first few days, they would sneak in with food while I pretended to be asleep, and then would race out of the cellar as if I would be up and after them. I have grown to have an affection for these two brave young people, although it is a mystery to me yet how much of their activity is the result of my induced instructions and how much is their own sympathy for my plight. It is most often the girl who brings food, although usually the boy is detectable outside somewhere,  and I assume they both live nearby, for they have never again brought an automobile up the lane.

Today I will go outside to look around and to stretch my muscles. My leg can take some weight, and I can hobble upright, although to do so brings more pain. But as I make this decision, there is an unusual series of noises from the outside. A car goes by on the road, and then another and another. Usually not more than half a dozen cars a day pass on the dirt road beyond the lane. They do not go on past, but I hear their engines roaring in first gear nearby. Is there a church, perhaps, some sort of farming process going on, a meeting? I would have heard cars like this before now if there were some center of everyday activity nearby. I stand up in the sunlight in the cellar door, unable to see beyond the top of the cellar steps or to extend my spatial perception in any detail beyond the immediate yard of the house. The sun is gloriously warm and golden on my fur. It makes me shiver. Now something is happening in a field nearby. The car engines have stopped now, and there is noise of people walking through grass and new corn fields. the rustle and shirring sounds of leaves across fabric. People are coming this way. I take a step up the stairs, holding to both sides of the cement passage to ease my bad leg.

"Hey-O, there he comes!"

The voice startles me by its nearness so that I try to step back and my leg doubles under me. I sit down hard on the cement floor, jarring my spine painfully. The voice came from above me, probably from an upper window of the house itself. How trusting I have become not to check my surroundings at all times. I have not scanned the upper parts of the house for days. There could be an army up there. I have been betrayed.

I stumble and crawl back to the mattress and concentrate. They will not catch what they are thinking they will this time. I shift.

And scream with pain and fall back on the mattress in agony. The pain in both legs races up into my skull and explodes there, making me insensible for a moment. One hand feels broken, and my whole spinal column is agonizing. My head pounds, and I look down to see blood oozing from half a dozen horrible looking lacerations that draw my  stomach open as I move. The human cannot control his body, and the wounds are still too deep, not healed enough. I try to push the pain aside, get some concentration, but my voice screams again. I blank it out and concentrate, as I hear, as if from far away, shouts and the pounding of running feet.

I have it. I shift.

"Look out! By God, look at that! Geezus, I thought it got you, Tyler. Was it you who screamed? Don't get too close! Godamighty!"

The loud voices come down into the cellar slowly as I fall back on the mattress, holding myself in a score of places at once to reestablish control. The pains have become unbearable  all over again, much of the healing undone by my foolish attempt to escape. And as the men come down the stairs with guns in their hands, down from the outside and  cautiously from upstairs in the old house, I am hardly aware of them, searching inside my own body for the controls that will stop the bleeding once again, pull muscles back across broken places not yet healed, will power to control the  swellings and internal misalignments that are still within me. The pains gradually give way as I establish control once again. I had forgotten how little control the human has over his body, and the change almost killed me before I could get back into my natural form. I am panting with the effort and with the nearness to destruction so that the men standing around me in the cellar now gradually assume the dangerous form they have taken on, their guns pointed at me from every direction of escape, more men on the stairways, blocking out the morning sun, their combined fear scent an acid stench in my nostrils. I come back to external reality again, look at them from my natural form and feel them in a group with all my senses. If they want to kill me now, they may, for I have little strength to fight them, and am only curious about their motives.

They stand around me. I lie curled on the old bloody mattress. For a minute it is an absurd tableau. I reach out with my will tentatively, order one man to put down his gun. He gets a blank look on his face and his shotgun droops, almost slips from his fingers, but I loose him, for I do not want to give that power away at this time, and there are too many of them to use it now. I search the ring of men with my spatial sense, the terrified eyes behind the guns, straw hats, police hats, no hats, grim lips, unshaven chins, big chins, wide shoulders, big belly here, scrawny legs there, overalls, jodhpurs, boots, work shoes, manure on the edge of that one, a shoestring loose on that one, leather belt there with brass buckle, knees worn on that pair of overalls. I curl up more tightly and roll against the wall. I will not try it. I will chance their curiosity being greater than their fear.

"Don't anybody shoot at it now unless it makes for you or tries to get away. It's on my land, and it's mine." The voice comes from the big belly with the straw hat. I extend my perceptions to take in the whole half circle of men. The big belly takes a tiny step forward, asserting his territorial rights by an advance of some three inches. The others at this moment are willing to acknowledge it. There is too much strange and terrible about the creature they have trapped, and none is certain that it might not at any moment rise with a roar and tear several of them apart. I might have done just that at one time. Now I know it is safer to lie very still, almost in a trance, so that no kicks or physical accidents will trigger my reflexes. I am still almost helpless with my injuries, and any attempt at rapid movement would mean death or at least disabling pain and dangerous bleeding.

"It comes at me, I'm gonna let it have both barrels," the faded overalls with patched knees says.

"Looks like you might have yourself a pile 'a dead bear meat, Otis," says the uniform jodhpurs with the police hat. "Anyway, it's not goin' to do much right now, doesn't look like."

"We need a hell uv a big cage for the thing," says the boots with the manure on them.

"Well let's
do
something," says unshaven chin.

"I think it ought to have a vet," says small face under railroad hat.

"Shit yes," says big belly, "let's take it to the hospital."

There is a scattering of nervous, almost hysterical laughter,  and the men begin to file out up the outside stairs. There is more talk: who will stay to keep guns on the creature, who will get a truck with a winch, what will happen, where will it be kept, how restrained, all the details of capturing the dangerous animal and fixing it in some miserable place where it can slowly die while curious humans look at it. I feel at this moment there is little danger, that perhaps the best thing I can do is simply go to sleep. I cannot do that, of course, but I can put myself into a light trance from which I may waken if real danger seems imminent.

Humans are very clever with their machinery. They quite well get around their easy terror and their simian urge to flight by surrounding themselves with machines, among which they feel somehow safe from all danger. I have been winched up a set of planks laid out on the stairs, and pulled, mattress and all, up into the body of a truck covered with canvas. They have attached chains to my legs and one arm. I covered the broken wrist with my body so they could not attach that chain. The bad leg is chained, but I am keeping it immobile. I have not shown my face at all since their first sight of me, keeping my head hidden in my arms. The chains are attached to each other with clever little swivel snaps that I could probably bite in two if I felt like it, and now they are winding the ends of the chains around parts of the truck. They have been speculating on my origin. The consensus is that I am an escaped Russian dancing bear. They are unable to account for my rather unbearish configuration and lack of visible claws. The supposition is that I am some rare species and have had my claws removed so that I can dance. Very clever. In another mood I might laugh. One of the braver ones runs his hand over my back and says he has not felt any bear pelt that was so soft and fine. I silently thank him for his discrimination and sink back into my light sleep where noises come through but do not disturb. The truck moves, jolts along the lane, and a noxious odor seeps up through the boards on which I am lying. The truck bounces out onto the road, and the odor is choking me now. I must have fresh air. I lift my head and move toward the rear of the truck.

"Yah! Look out, here it comes!"

The man who screams has just leaped out of the back of the truck, and his companion is about to follow him. The truck gives a lurch as it begins to stop and the other man, unbalanced, falls backward over the low tailboard, still holding  his shotgun, and appears a second later lying in the road behind us. Now the truck is stopped, and I have my nose stuck out into the fresh air. The fumes are of a poisonous kind and would deaden my senses quickly if I breathed them for long. The men are milling about and running down the road, where it appears one of my guards has a broken arm. Ah well, fresh air. I subside into the truck again and cover my face as more men come running up with guns.