Eye of Cat Part 23

There was an old b.u.g.g.e.r from Ghent Spilled his drink in the s.e.xbot's vent.

He screamed and he howled As if disemboweled.

Instead of coming, he went.

COMPUTER THERAPIST CHARGED WITH MALPRACTICE.

BLACK HOLE TO BE AUCTIONED.

At Sotheby Park Bernet next Wednesday

A WET SPRING FOR MUCH OF THE NATION.

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Mercy Spender, awakening with a taste for tea and the desire to attend a dog race - strange thought - called Fisher and asked him to join her in the dining room. Then she showered, dressed, combed her hair and thought about makeup for the first time since her early singing days.

Fisher rummaged through his thoughts, wondering whether his illusions could use a touch more cla.s.s. How long since he had been to an art gallery? Studied himself in the mirror. Perhaps he ought to let his hair grow longer.

Out the window, new day clearing, snow melting, water dripping. He hummed a tune - Ironbear's, now he thought of it. Not bad, that beat.

Alex Mancin decided to undertake a retreat at a monas- tery he had heard of in Kentucky. The money market could take care of itself, and the dogs would be fed and groomed by the kennel keeper, poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. They were such stupid little things.

Ironbear turned and sidled, pa.s.sing through the narrow, rockfallen place between sheer rises. As he had progressed, his ability to read the trail signs had grown better and better, exceeding perhaps what it had been in those long-forgotten days in the Gateway to the Arctic. Now, as he entered the canyon, he felt that he was nearing the trail's end.

He did not pause to study the ruins about him but moved directly to the area amid charred brush and gra.s.ses where the ground indicated that a struggle had occurred. He squat- ted and remained unmoving for a long while when he reached it, studying the earth. Chips of turquoise, dried blood... Whatever had gone on here had been very vio- lent.

Finally he rose and turned toward the ruin to his left.

Something had crawled or been dragged in that direction. He opened his mind and probed carefully but could detect nothing.

Vague images pa.s.sed through his awareness as he ap- proached the ruin. He had been present as part of the being which the Sands construct had formed here under highly symbolic circ.u.mstances, had felt the telekinetic power reaching, felt the blast. But after that event, nothing. He was swept away at that very point, to continue his tracking.

... And then he saw him, propped against a wall near a corner of the ruin. At first Ironbear could not tell whether he was breathing, though his eyes were open and directed to his right.

Moving nearer, he saw the pictograph Singer himself had drawn on the wall with his own blood. It was a large circle, containing a pair of dots, side by side, about a third of the

way down its. diameter. Lower, beneath these, was an up- ward-curving arc.

Inhaling the moment, Ironbear shook his head at what was rare, at what was powerful. Like the buffalo, it probably would not last. A life's gamble. But just now, just this instant, before he advanced and broke the feeling's spell, there was something. Like the buffalo.

High on the mountain of fire in the lost place of the Old Ones, fire falling to the right of me, to the left of me, before, behind, above, below, I met my self's chindi, chindi's self.

Shall I name me a name now, to have eaten him?

I walk the rainbow trail.

In a time of ice and fire in the lost place of the Old Ones I met my self's chindi, became my chindi's self.

I have traveled through the worlds.

I am a hunter in all places.

My heart was divided into four parts and eaten by the winds.

I have recovered them.

I sit at the center of the entire world sending forth my song.

I am everywhere at home, and all things have been given back to me.

I have followed the trail of my life and met myself at its end.

There is beauty all around me.

Nayenezgani came for me into the Darkness House, putting aside with his stag the twisted things, the things reversed.

The Dark Hunter remembers me,

Coyote remembers me, the Sky People remember me, this land remembers me, the Old Ones remember me, I have remembered myself coming up into the world.

I sit on the great sand-pattern of Dinetah, here at its center.

Its power remembers me.

Coyote call across the darkness bar...

I have eaten myself and grown strong.

There is beauty all around me.

Before me, behind me, to the right and to the left of me, corn pollen and rainbow.

The white medicine lifts me in his hand.

The dancer at the heart of all things turns like a dust-devil before me.

My lightning-bead is shattered.

I have spoken my own laws.

My only enemy, my self, reborn, is also the dancer.

My trail, my mind, is filled with stars in the great wheel of their turning toward springtime. Stars.

I come like the rain with the wind and all growing things.

The white medicine lifts me in his hand.

Here at lost Lukachakai I say this: The hunting never ends.

The way is beauty.

The medicine is strong.

The ghost train doesn't stop here anymore. I am the hunter in the eye of the hunted. If I call they will come to me out of Darkness Mountain.