The Iron Breed (28 page)

“Well, you can't be a one-man army to save all the animals—”

“Maybe not—but I tell you, if
somebody
doesn't start doing something—then someday . . .”

“Someday what? Animals get back at us? Shut us up in cages? Leave us on dumps? That what you mean?”

“I dunno. I just have a feeling we've got to learn how to live so everything has a fair chance. There was something I read once, had to learn it for my book report. ‘Animals are not brethren nor underlings, but others, caught with ourselves in a net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of earth.'”

“Huh? What's all that mean in plain talk now—”

“That we're all part of this world together—and—well, we've got to learn to live together in another kind of way. Or else we've all lost.”

“You and your books! Come on anyway. I'll give you a hand with the box . . .”

* * *

A thousand years later and half the galaxy away, Jony rubbed his throat again. He could scent the camp of the People. He wore no collar, nor did they. No iron cages waited for either of them—alien to each other though they might be. He threw his arms wide, and the feeling of freedom made him almost giddy.

BREED TO COME

With appreciation for their invaluable aid in research,

my thanks to my resident people-in-fur

(in order of seniority)

Timmie

Punch

Samwise

Frodo

Su Li

and to the valiant memory of

Thai Shan

Sabina

Samantha

who were with us for far too short a time.

Man is old enough to see himself as he really is—a mammal among mammals. . . . He is old enough to know that in the years to come he may be crowded out like the prehistoric monsters of the past, while life breaks out in some ascendant form that is better suited to survive. . . .

—Homer W. Smith,
Kamongo

What monstrous folly, think you, ever led nature to create her one great enemy—man!

—John Charles Van Dyke

1

There was a light breeze, just enough to whisper through the leaves. Furtig lay belly down on the broad limb of the tree, hunter-fashion, but his claws were still in his belt loop, not strapped on. No sniff of that breeze brought any useful scent to his expanded nostrils. He had climbed the tree not for a base from which to make a good capture-leap, but to see what lay beyond. However, now he knew that he must climb higher still. The leaves were too thick a screen here.

He moved with sinuous grace. Though his ancestors had hunted on four legs, Furtig now went on two, save when time pressed and he had to take to a fast run. And he was very much at home in the treetops. For those ancestors had also been climbers, just as their active curiosity had led them into exploration. Now he drew up from his perch into smaller branches, on which he balanced with inborn skill.

At last he gained a crotch, and there he faced through an opening what he had come to see. He had chosen a tree on a small hill, and the expanse before him was clear.

The first nips of frost had struck the country, though by day a gentle warmth returned. Tall grass rippled between him and those distant, monstrous shadows. The grass was brown, and it would not be long before the cold season. But first came the Trials of Skill.

Furtig's black lips pulled tight, and he opened his mouth on a soundless battle snarl. The white curve of tearing fangs showed their pointed tips. His ears flattened in folds against his rounded skull, the furred ridge along his back lifted, and the hair on his tail puffed.

To those who had known his ancestors, he would be a grotesque sight; for a body once well fitted to the needs of its owner had altered in ways strange to nature. Rounded forepaws had split into stubby fingers, awkward enough but able to accomplish much more in the way of handling. His body was still largely furred, but there were places where the fur had thinned to a light down. There was more dome to his skull, just as the brain beneath was different, dealing with thoughts and conceptions earlier unknown. In fact it was that brain which had altered most of all. Feline, Furtig's ancestors had been. But Furtig was something which those who had known those felines could not have accurately named.

His people did not measure time more than by certain rites of their own, such as the bi-yearly Trials of Skill when a warrior gave the best evidence of his prowess so that the females could pick a mate. One noted the coming of winter cold, and the return of spring, summer's heat when one drowsed through the days and hunted by night. But the People did not try to count one year apart from the rest.

Though it was said that Gammage did things none other of the People thought of doing. Gammage—

Furtig studied the bulk of buildings on the other side of the fields, lairs of the Demons. Yet Gammage feared no Demon. If all the stories were true, Gammage lived yonder in the heart of the lost Demon world. It was the custom for first-rite warriors to speak of “going to Gammage.” And once in a long while one would. Not that any returned—which argued that the Demons still had their traps at work, even though no Demon had been seen for generations.

Furtig had seen pictures of them. It was part of the regular scout training to be taught to recognize the enemy. And, while a youngling could be shown one of the Barkers, a Tusked One, or even a vile Ratton in the flesh, he had to depend solely upon such representations of Demons for identification.

Long ago the Demons had gone from their lairs, though they had left foul traces of their existence behind them. The stinking sickness, the coughing death, the eaten-skin ills—these had fallen on the People too in the past, for once they had been imprisoned in the Demons' lairs. Only a small handful of them had escaped.

The memory of such deaths had kept them away from the lairs for many lifetimes. Gammage had been the first to dare to return to live in the Demons' forsaken shells. And that was because his thirst for knowledge had taken him there. Gammage came of a strange line differing yet again from many of the People.

Absently Furtig brought his hand to his mouth, licked the fur on it clean of an itch-causing leaf smear. He was of Gammage's own clan line, and they were noted for their boldness of curiosity and their differences in body. In fact they were not too well regarded. Once more his lips wrinkled, his tail twitched a little. Warriors of his family did not find it easy to take a mate, not even when they won in the Trials. Their restlessness of spirit, their habit of questioning old ways, of exploring, was not favored by any prudent cave mother who wished security for future younglings.

Such would look in the opposite direction when Gammage's kin padded by. And Gammage himself, awesome as he was, had little repute nowadays. Though the clans were willing enough to accept the infrequent, but always surprising, gifts which he had sent from the lairs in times past.

The hunting claws, which clicked softly as Furtig shifted his weight, were one of Gammage's first gifts to his people. They were made of a shining metal which did not dull, break, or flake with the passing of years as did the shards of metal found elsewhere. Set in a band which slipped over the hand, they snapped snugly just above the wrist, projecting well beyond the stubby fingers with tearing, curved hooks, like the claws one grew, but far more formidable and dangerous. And they were used just as one used one's natural defenses. A single well-placed blow could kill one of the deer or wild cows Furtig's people hunted for their staple food.

In war with one's kind they were forbidden. But they could be worn to face the Barkers, as those knew only too well. And with the Rattons—one used all and any weapons against those evil things. While with the Tusked Ones there were no quarrels, because of a truce.

Yes, the claws were from Gammage. And from time to time other things came from him, all designed to lighten the task of living in the Five Caves. So that the clans were respected and feared. There were rumors that another tribe of the People had settled lately to the north of the lairs, but so far none of Furtig's people had seen them.

The lairs—Furtig studied those blots on the landscape. They formed a long range of mountains. Was Gammage still there? It had been—he began to count seasons, tapping them off with a finger—it had been as many as fingers on his one hand since any word or gift had come from Gammage. Perhaps the Ancestor was dead.

Only that was hard to believe. Gammage had already lived far past the proper span of any ordinary warrior. Why, it had been Furtig's great-great-grandfather who had been Gammage's youngling in the last of the families born before the death of his mate and his departure for the lairs. It was also true that Gammage's blood lived longer than most. Fuffor, Furtig's father, had died in a battle with the Barkers, and he was then the only one of his years left at the Five Caves.

Nor had he seemed old; his mate had had another pair of younglings that very season, and she was the fourth mate he had won during the passing of seasons!

If it was not that so much of Gammage's blood now ran in the tribe there might be trouble. Once more Furtig snarled silently. Tales grew, and dark tales always grow the faster and stronger. Gammage was in league with Demons, he used evil learning to prolong his life. Yet for all such mewling of stories in the dark, his people were eager enough to welcome one of Gammage's messengers—take what he had to offer.

Only, now that those messengers came no more, and one heard nothing from those who had gone to seek Gammage, the stories grew in force. At the last Trials Furtig's older brother of another birth time had won. Yet he had not been chosen by any mate. And so he had joined the far scouts and taken a western trail-of-seeking from which he had never returned. Would it be any better for Furtig? Perhaps less—for he was not the warrior-in-strength that Fughan had been, being smaller and less powerful, even though his rivals granted him speed and agility.

He supposed he should be in practice now, using all those skills for the Trials, not wasting time staring at the lairs. Yet he found it hard to turn away. And his mind built strange pictures of what must lie within those walls. Great had been the knowledge of the Demons, though they had used it ill and in a manner which later brought them to defeat and death.

Furtig remembered hearing his father discuss the dim history of those days. He had been talking with one of Gammage's messengers about some discovery the Ancestor had made. That had been when Gammage had sent his picture of a Demon; they were to beware any creature who resembled it.

Before they had died, the Demons had gone mad, even as sometimes the Barkers did. They had fallen upon one another in rage, and were not able to mate or produce younglings. So without younglings and with their terrible hatred for one another, they had come to an end, and the world was the better for their going.

Gammage had learned this in the lairs, but he also feared that someday the Demons might return. From death? Furtig wondered. Great learning they had had, but could any living creature die and then live again? Perhaps the Demons were not rightly living creatures such as the People, even the Rattons. Someday—someday he would go to Gammage to learn more.

But not today, not until he had proven himself, shown all the Five Caves that the blood of Gammage was not to be ill-considered. And he would waste no more time in spying on the dead lairs of Demons either!

Furtig swung out of the tree, dropping lightly. This was the outpost of a small grove which angled back to become an arm of the forest country, the hunting territory of the Five Caves. Furtig was as at home in its shade as he was in the caves.

He stopped to tuck his hunting claws more tightly into his belt so that no small jangle would betray his passing, and then flitted on, his feet making no sound on the ground. Since he wanted to make speed he went to all fours, moving in graceful bounds. The People stood proudly upright when it was a time of ceremony, thus proving that the Demons who always walked so were no greater, but in times of need they fell back upon ancestral ways.

He planned to approach the caves from the north, but at first his course was west. That would take him by a small lake, a favorite feeding place of plump ducks. To return with an addition to the cave food supplies was always the duty of a warrior.

Suddenly a whiff of rank scent brought Furtig to a halt, crouching in the bushes. His hand whipped to his belt, reached for the claws, and he worked his hands into them with practiced speed.

Barkers! And more than one by the smell. They were not lone hunters like his own people, but moved in packs, centering in upon the kill. And one of the People would be a kill they would enjoy.

Courage was one thing, stupidity another. And Furtig's people were never stupid. He could remain where he was and do battle, for he did not doubt that the Barkers would speedily scent him (in fact he wondered fleetingly why they had not already done so). Or he could seek safety in the only flight left—aloft.

The hunting claws gave him a firm grip as they bit into tree bark, and he pulled himself up with haste. He found a branch from which he could view the ground below. Deep in his throat rumbled a growl he would not give full voice to, and with flattened ears and fur lifted on his spine, he watched, eyes aslit in a fighting face.

There were five of them, and they trotted four-footed. They had no one such as Gammage to supply them with any additions to the natural weapons of fangs. But those were danger enough. The Barkers were a third again as large as Furtig in size, their strong muscles moving smoothly under hides which were some as gray as his own, others blotched with black or lightened on belly and chest with cream.

They wore belts not unlike his, and from three of these dangled the limp bodies of rabbits. A hunting party. But so far they had found only small prey. If they kept on along that way though (Furtig's soundless growl held a suggestion of anticipation), they were going to cross the regular ranging ground of the Tusked Ones. And if they were foolish enough to hunt them—Furtig's green eyes glistened. He would back the Tusked Ones against any foe—perhaps even against Demons. Their warriors were not only fierce fighters but very wily brained.