Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 2 Part 26

"Papa Garamask, do not fall!" Chavo called. "Do not fall into the open mouth of the Riksino."

"You fool! Why should I fall into the bear's mouth?" Garamask asked in amazement. "Bear, bear, you turn it on, do you? What are you, an amateur hypnotist? It might get you the birds and the small game, not a man. Turn it on, bear, turn it on as strong as you can! The Garamask will never be so fascinated as to fall into a bear's mouth."

And Garamask fell head-first into the mouth of the riksino bear.

From above there was another roaring, terrified and hysterical, and a third weight came down heavily. From the bowels of the riksino came an agonizing groan; and Garamask was being crushed to death, but not instantly.

His skull spike aided him. His elbow sabers, for he was in to the maw of the animal beyond them, did slashing service. Then he was crushed in together in spite of them and his head began to split open. And then he was crushed no more, as his enveloping cosmos went limp.

And after a while lie was climbing again, up to the top of Giri Mountain. He was alive, more or less, and he was dazed and gagging. Had it all been a b.l.o.o.d.y dream, the fight with Riksino? Chavo was booming as offensively as ever, but the thing had not been a dream.

"I save your life, Papa Garamask," Chavo boomed. "Am I not wonderful? I kill the Big Riksino in the throat while he is straining there to crush you in his gullet. The Big Riksino can think of only one thing at atime, and the Big Chavo can knife through even the thickest strained sinews very rapidly when he is given a free way to it. There is no other way that Riksino can be killed but by two hunters similarly; but the bait-hunter in the mouth almost always dies."

"You tried to kill me after Sinek had fallen off the mountain to his death, Chavo," Garamask panted. "Why did you not let the Riksino kill me, since you want nie dead?"

"The way the Riksino kills, you would be of no use to us dead," said Chavo. "He devours too rapidly."

"And otherwise I would be of some use to you dead, Chavo?"

"Dead, very freshly dead, or still dying, you would be of greatest use to us," Chavo said blandly. "Dying or new dead, you will represent our ultimate hope."

Just at last sun they came to the top of Giri Mountain, the second mountain of Three-Mountain. They ate bitter mountain rations, and Chavo dabbled medicaments on Garamask's wounds.

"Were you to survive the mountain hunt (and you will not) you could get a new nose made and be beautiful again," said Chavo. "Now, I suppose, you must live noseless until your death the tomorrow sun-fall. Or shall I attempt to make you a surrogate nose from the wood of this thorn-bush here?"

"Don't bother, Chavo. I'm going to sleep."

But Garamask was not going to sleep. Chavo took his stringed hitfur from his pack and played his d.a.m.nable music and sang.

"Chavo!" Garamask spoke sharply. "Do you know why Spain on World fell from the highest nation in Europe to the lowest within one generation?"

"Perhaps they offended the frog-G.o.d."

"No. No, we have no frog-G.o.ds on World."

"What? What? Are you sure? No frog-G.o.ds on World? You dash me down."

"A devilish Arab, angered by the expulsion of the Arabs from Spain, brought a guitar into that unfortunate country. It was adopted. So that unfortunate country fel1, its once n.o.ble soul shriveled into a miserable whiney-ness."

"I understand, Papa Garamask," said Chavo, still strumming. "They fell, as though the n.o.ble Rogha should fall to become ourselves Oganta."

"A good parallel, Chavo. And once in the Pacific Ocean on World, there was a n.o.ble kingdom of Hawaii. A sea-faring man introduced the guitar there, and the n.o.ble kingdom soon begged to be accepted into servitude by a land-nation."

"Yes, of course that would be the effect, Papa Garamask. We Oganta would accept such servitude gladly, but there is no longer anyone to accept us into it."

"My own land, the Conglomerate States, fell similarly," said Garamask sadly. "And once it had been a n.o.ble land."

"The n.o.ble Rogha, of course, despise the instrument," Chavo mourned.

"But to us it is the Shetra, the holy instrument. It is our religion. It is our love."

"It is the noise of accepted inferiority in all things."

"Of course it is, Papa Garamask. And who are more or than ourselves, the Oganta? But we will give it up, we promise this, if we are ever able to give up being Oganta."

"Oh, go to sleep, Chavo!"

"But you say that you have no frog-G.o.ds on your world, and yet you have frogs? And we have our frog-G.o.ds, and, have no frogs except those introduced from World. And these are small frogs that have been imported.

The largest of them can be held in the two hands. I dream about the frogs of World. How big are they, Papa Garamask? As big as the King Riksino?"

"Oh no. You've a completely mistaken idea, Chavo. The frogs on World are the same as the frogs imported here from World. The most of them you could hold in one hand."

"Are you sure? They are not as big as myself? They are not even asbig as yourself?"

"No, no, Chavo. They are quite small. I've often wondered about the frog-cult on Paravath. What is the meaning of it?"

"You dash me d6wn again, Papa Garamask. There should be frogs of great size. Why, the frog is the most wondeuful of all creatures! It is the only one that is able to make the frog-leap easily. Oh, may that thing come back to us!"

"Go to sleep, you d.a.m.nable oaf."

Chavo sighed deeply. "1 dream about frogs," he murmured. Then he did seem to go to sleep.

Allyn came then, but he was a thinner and more vapory Allyn than in his previous appearances to Garamask.

"The Shasos, the eagle-condor, isn't very hard to kill," said Allyn.

"He will attack you when you are roping up the cliff face, of course; for there is no other time he will fight. If you can belay yourself on the rope, and if you are not overpowered with fear, you have a chance. Wring his neck like a chicken if you can, for he is a chicken.

"But he will rip you apart to get to your kidneys and spleen if he can. Prevent him in this! He will gobble your eyes out of your head. Let him not do this! Let him not do it with both of them, at least, or you are at a disadvantage."

"Allyn, I will go as far as you went," said Garamask. "I'm as good a man as you ever were. Tell me now, what is the mystery at the end of it that you didn't find out till you died? What is peculiar about the final prey, the Bater-Jeno? What were you on to, Allyn?"

But wraiths are notoriously hard of hearing.

"You will do well to weaken the bridge after you have crossed over it, and to keep your gaze always fixed on the back of your head," the dead-man Allyn said. Then he became thinner, and he was gone.

Garamask again woke eagerly and easily at first gray light. His face and his throat were not as sore as they had been. Though bereaved in ear and nose, he was happy. He lifted up his heart to the morning. Enjoyably, he kicked Chavo the Oganta awake, for the Oganta are not morning types.

They ate bitter mountain rations, donned sabers and claws and spikes and armor, and began to climb Bior Mountain, the third and highest mountain of Three-Mountain. Here it was steep and sheer, Bior a saber mountain rising out of its sheath which was Giri Mountain. It was a different sort of hunt now, and a climb in a different element.

There were the slanting slick shields of rock, and the slanting slick gra.s.s and cobble-moss. There were the rodents and poke-snakes that ate the gra.s.s and the moss and slithered over the rocks. There were the great birds that stood in from the tall skies and ate the rodents and poke-snakes.

The greatest of these birds was the Shasos, the eagle-condor.

"Is it with Shasos as it was with the first two prey: that there are many of them, and that there is one special one?" Garamask asked Chavo.

"Yes, it is Shasos himself who will attack, and the others will not.

It is the big Shasos himself whom we have to fear, he who nests on the third moon."

"Moon-brained muggledoon! Where do the other Shasos nest, Chavo?"

"On the second moon. The less n.o.ble of the large birds nest on first moon, and small birds nest on Paravath itself. I am told that you do not have such large birds as Shasos on World."

"There are no birds on World so large as those three swooping there now, Chavo. Are they Shasos?"

"No, Papa Garamask, they are of the less n.o.ble of the big birds, Cejer-Birds. When we are a little higher in the sky we will come to the hunting cliffs of Shasos. Now I will climb up here dangerously, and then I will run a line down. We will be running many of these lines."

The oafish Chavo could climb. He oozed up the overhanging rock likeslightly viscous oil. He climbed with all his armor, and he seemed sure of his grip on these rocks that were slick with cobble-moss.

From forty meters above he let down a line, and Garamask climbed it -- very tiring work.

"What was to keep you from letting me fall with the line?" Garamask asked Chavo when they were up to that next hint of a ledge in the rocks.

"Would an Oganta violate the sanct.i.ty of the line?" Chavo asked him.

It was a very long hard day. Garamask went up long lines a dozen times, terriying overhangs out over nothingness. Slate-gray clouds were below them, and Paravath could no longer be seen below. The gra.s.s and cobble-moss became stronger, shattering the rocks with their growth and making them all very soft and dangerous. The rodents and poke-snakes became larger; and there were larger birds that stood in from the stark sky to prey on them. This was fearful exaltation here, stunning heeight without support.

First moon, cragged and misshapen in the day-sky, seemed nearer than the glimpses of Paravath below. Indeed, the little first moon was only eight times the distance from Mountain-Foot.

"There is shasos, and there, and there," said Chavo as they were resting on an imaginary ledge, actually only a band of discoloration on the rock. "But it is not yet Shasos himself. Quite soon he, though."

Garamask followed Chavo up several quite difficult stretches, refusing to let a line be strung. And, then there loomed above them a very long and very difficult overhang that Garamask knew he would never be able to climb.

"It is the line again here, Chavo," he said, "and I hate to be dependent on you. Can even you climb this?"

"I can climb this, and it is the hardest of the climbs. But first I will tell you something here. It is at this place, on the line that I will drop, that you will have your encounter with Shasos. He is out there now, the black dot in the sky, sleeping on furled wings, motionless. But he sleeps with one eye open, and watches. He will attack you midway in your climb up the line. He will rip you apart to get to your kidneys and spleen.

He will gobble the eyes out of your head."

"So I've been told by another, Chavo. Yes, I remember birds in legend eating the spleen and liver of a certain one forever."

"I suppose that World-birds and World-G.o.ds eat the spleen, Papa Garamask, to bring them through their time of change. Here we require a different food."

Chavo the amazing Oganta climber went up the longest and most dangerous climb, flowing like oil up the cliff. He disappeared and reappeared to Garamask four different times, following the contours of the cliffs, and then he seemed to achieve a real base. Soon the very thin line, one hundred meters of it, came down; and Garamask began the very tiring climb up it.

Halfway up he was arm and leg weary and sick, and he heard the sky-whistle. It was the wings of big Shasos powering toward him. Garamask wrapped his legs in the line, having achieved at that point a slope that supported him slightly, and waited the attack with fist, elbow, and skull knives flashing.

"Like Prometheus bound to the rock for the attack of the great birds!" he said. "And why did I never realize that it had to be a high rock in the sky he was bound to?"

Shasos had a wingspan of perhaps twenty meters, and a great head with sickle jaws. In actual body the bird as about the same size as Garamask.

Shasos was in fast, slashed Garamask deeply over the groin, and Garamask jagged the bird still more deeply in the back of the head. The line twisted with Garamask. On the second swoop Shasos got Garamask in the small of the back, and Garamask countered effectively again into the bird-head.

Again, and Shasos gaped open Garamask's lower side, held there, had him nowripped open fore and aft; and perhaps he did eat somewhat of the spleen. But Garamask smote half through the head of the creature, and Shasos staggered in the air.

"I have you now," Garamask reveled. "You die a-winging. But now you come the last time, and you come for the eyes. You'll gobble them out of my head, will you? 'Do not let him do it to both of them or you will be at a disadvantage,' the dead man Allyn told me. Have at me, chicken! It's the end of you."

Shasos did slash Garamask over his eye, and something was hanging down the man's cheek. Whether it was a fold of flesh or the eye itself Garamask did not know. He had fist claws into the throat of Shasos, into the long stringy neck that was sinewed like a cable. He strained, and the sinews gave a little. Then they gave up completely. He wrung Shasos' neck like a chick for he was a chicken. And the big broken bird fell a leaf toward the slate-gray clouds below.

"I'm ripped up pretty gapingly," Garamask said, "but nothing is looping out of me. I was always a sound man in my entrails. It's up the weary climb again, and to find the fourth prey that is the mystery to me and was the death of Allyn."

So Garamask completed the very tiring climb up the line. He was met by the oafish grinning face of Chavo. They were on top of Bior Mountain, the third mountain of Three-Mountain.

"I have a nice surprise for you," Chavo boomed. "I will ready it for you while you rest."

"I have two surprises for you," said Garamask, "and I will have them ready in due time."

You will do well to weaken the bridge after you have crossed it, and to keep your gaze fixed on the back of your head, the dead man Allyn had said. Chavo was busy with his surprise. Garamask weakened the bridge he had just crossed, the line he had climbed, gashing it with heel saber. He didn't cut it through. It would still, he believed, support his weight going down, if he had guessed wrong, and if he would not have to seek another way down.

But the line would not now support a weight several times greater than Garamask's.

"I am soldering a device to a deep boulder," Chavo said. "You from World do not understand rock-soldering, but you will not be able to get this device loose to fling it off the mountain; and you will not be able to si1ence it."

"And I am doing a thing of my own," said Garamask, and he had cut a small teleor tree with his heel saber and was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g it with his fist claws. "We are on top of Bior Mountain, Chavo, and it is a small flat top; and there is n.o.body here but ourselves. Where is the fourth prey, the Bater-Jeno, called either the crag-ape or the frog-man?"

"Bater-Jeno is here," said Chavo. "He sets his signature, as surely as Riksino set his own below."

Garamask had hurriedly sliced a length of line from Chavo's pack as the sound began, a stronger thing than even the stench of Risino. With the line, Garamask lashed the teleor pole to one of his elbow sabers that he had removed. Then it was over him like putrid waves, the gagging cacophony of hittur music and Oganta singing. It was a recorder that Chavo had soldered to the rock, but Garamask had a good long spear now.

"You will not be able to silence the playing, Papa Garamask," Chavo chortled. "It will drive you bugs in your last moments. And Bater-Jeno is here. He is myself. Or he is yourself. Come and face me and we will find out which."

Garamask knocked Chavo down with the b.u.t.t-end of the teleor-tree spear. Chavo had not even noticed it. Then Garamask put the blade to the Oganta's chest, just below the throat armor.

"You have violated the weapon code," Chavo complained.

"Not really, Chavo. I'll give up my edge and fight the fourth preyeven, after we have talked. If I do go to my death now, I do not want to go fuzzy in my facts as Allyn did. Quick now, Chavo. Talk! Where is the person Ocras who killed Allyn? Is he really dead?"

"Dead? No, Papa Garamask, he is translated. Ocras (the hunger) has become Treorai, a n.o.ble Rogha. You have talked to this Treorai. It was he who ate the backbrains of your friend Allyn, and so was transformed."

"Chavo, that h.e.l.lish music and wailing will burst my brains! What wildness are you saying? The Oganta bocome Rogha? You are the same species?"

"Pop your head like a pippin, Papa Garamask, drive you bugs. We are the same species, the n.o.ble Rogha and the unn.o.ble us. We turn into the Rogha, but now we can no longer turn into them. We have lost the ability to make the frog-leap, except under special stimulus."

"Seventh h.e.l.l! It's the same noise they have down there. May I never fall so low. What is the frog-mystic, oaf? Talk."

"The frog-leap, it is our transformation from Oganta to Rogha. What other creature, except the holy frog, changes from a form so unbelievable so suddenly? Strangers believe that we are two different species, as they would believe the tadpole and the frog were two different species. We worship the frog as the high sign of ourselves."

"What went wrong, oaf? What happened to the transformations? What is the difficulty now? Fill it all in. Nice spear, isn't it?"

"Nice spear, Papa Garamask, but I cry foul. The difficulty -- perhaps a cosmic difficulty. For one hundred equivalent years no Oganta has turned into a Rogha without special stimulus. We generate as Oganta, and we live out our lives as Oganta, and we are not able to maintain the high civilization of the Rogha. We have lost our adult form, and we try to regain it."

"How, Chavo? What does the murder of Allyn have to do with this?

flow did the Oganta Ocras become the Rogha Treorai? What was his special stimulus?"

"To eat the back-brains of a Rogha will transform an Oganta into a Rogha, if both are strong and capable. We calculate that there is enough there to transform four Oganta. We have also discovered (Ocras discovered it in becoming Treorai) that eating the back-brains of certain fully-charged World-men will bring on this transformation in us -- those of such World-men who might be able to stay with a mountain-hunt till the fourth prey."