Pete said, “I can repair them.”
Miraculously, it paused; for a time the female extensor ceased to drag him like some wounded fish hooked on the ocean’s floor. “No,” it decided, then. Abruptly. “If you got inside down there you would hurt me.”
“Am I not a man?” Pete said.
“Yes.” It answered grudgingly.
“Does not a man have honor? Show me where else in the universe honor exists except in man.” His casuistry was working well, he noted. And at just — thank god — the right time. “In the sky?” he said. “Look up and tell me if you see honor among plants and oceans. You could comb the entire Earth but at last you would have to come back to me.” He paused, then. Gambling on his ploy. Staking everything on the one thrust.
“I admit I am worried,” the Great C said. “The ability of the phocomelus. . . that even he, without limbs, could escape from me. That a portion of me extended into the world should die at his invitation. I was suckered into it. Mickey-Moused. And he went on, unreached.”
“That would never have happened,” Pete said, “in the olden days. Then, in that time, you were too strong.”
“It’s hard for me to remember.”
“Maybe you do not remember. But I remember.” He managed, then, to pry one hand loose. “God damn it,” he said, “let me go.”
“Let me try,” a voice said from beside him, a man speaking quietly; he turned at once. And saw a human being standing there, wearing a tattered khaki uniform and metal helmet, crested, like the French helmets of World War One. Pete, amazed, said nothing as the uniformed man brought from a leather pouch a small crescent wrench; fitting it over a bolt of the female extensor’s cranium, the man began to twist vigorously. “It’s rusted,” he said, continuing on. “But it’ll let you go rather than have me take it apart. Isn’t that right, Great C?” He laughed, a powerful, virile laugh. The laugh of a man. A man in the prime of his life.
“Kill it,” Pete said.
“No. It’s alive; it wants to go on. I don’t have to kill it to make it let you go.” The uniformed man tapped with the wrench on the metal head of the extensor. “One more turn,” he said, “and your bank of selenoid switches will short out. You’ve already lost one extensor today; can you afford to lose another? I don’t think so. You can’t have many left.”
“Can I consider for a moment?” the Great C asked. Pulling back his sleeve, the man consulted his wrist-watch. . . “Sixty seconds,” he said. “And then I’ll start unscrewing again.”
“Hunter,” the Great C said, “you will destroy me.”
“Then let go,” the uniformed man said.
“But –”
“Let go.”
“I will be the laughing stock of the civilized world.”
The uniformed man said, “There is no civilized world. Only us. And I have the wrench. I found it in an air-raid shelter a week ago, and since then –” Again he reached for the bolt, his wrench extended.
The extensor of the Great C released Pete’s remaining hand, clasped its two hands together, lifted them, and smashed at the uniformed man, a single blow that tossed the man like timber; he fell away, fell grotesquely, hesitated for an instant on his knees. Blood dripped from his mouth. He seemed in that instant to be praying. And then he dropped face first onto the clutter of bindweed surrounding him. The wrench lay where he had dropped it.
“He is dead,” the extensor said.
“No.” Pete bent over him, one knee on the ground; the blood soaked into his clothes, absorbed by the rough fabric. “Take him instead of me,” Pete said to the extensor, and scrambled back, out of its reach. The extensor was right.
The Great C said, “I don’t like hunters. They dry out the hydroxide of bernithium in my batteries, and if you think that’s funny you should try it sometime.”
“Who was he?” Pete said. “What did he hunt?”
“He hunted the limbless freak who came before you. It had been assigned to him; he would be paid. All the hunters are paid; they do not act out of conviction.”
“Who paid him?”
“Who knows who paid him? He got paid; that’s all.”
Continuing to back away, Pete said, “This needless killing. I can’t stand it. There are so few human beings anyhow.” He broke, then, and ran.
It did not follow after him.
Looking back, he saw it dragging the body of the hunter into its cavity. To feed on it, even now, even with most of its life gone. Feeding on the residual life: the cellular activity which had not yet ceased. Awful, he thought, and shuddered. And ran on.
He tried to save me, Pete thought blindly.
Why?
Cupping his hands, he shouted at the Great C, “I have never heard of Albert Einstein.” He waited but no response came. So, after a cautious pause, he continued on.
THIRTEEN
Peddling rapidly, the final image of the Great C extension and the hunter still strong in his mind, Pete guided his bicycle along the curving way that led among stone hills. Passing a steep shoulder, he was suddenly confronted with a number of small, moving figures who occupied the trail before him.
His action was automatic.
“Look out!” he shouted, twisting the handlebars and braking.
He struck stone, was thrown. The bicycle clattered and skidded on ahead. He scraped his elbow, his hip, his knee. In the instant preceding pain, he exclaimed, “Bugs!” with equal surprise and disgust.
As he recovered himself, rubbing and dusting, the nearest bug turned to him.
“Hey, big fella,” it observed, “you squoosh one of us and it’ll rain on you.”
“That’s ants,” Pete said, and, “Damn it! You want to play in traffic, you’re asking to be hit!”
“This ain’t exactly the rush hour,” the bug said, returning its attention to a dusty brown sphere about eight inches in diameter. It began pushing this along the trail while Pete checked his radio set for damage.
“Here’s another!” hollered one of the bugs from up ahead.
“Great! I’m coming.”
The dials glowed. The usual interim static peppered the air. Pete decided that the radio had fared better than had his back and hip. Heading then toward his bicycle, he came abreast of the bug once more. This time a telltale breeze caused him to dilate his nostrils.
“Say, bug, just what the –”
“Watch it!” snapped the chitinous wayfarer.
Pete’s recoil was only partly sufficient. A brown, crumbly mass struck his left foot and broke there.
He looked up the road to where another of the bugs stood laughing.
“You did that on purpose!” he said, shaking his fist.
“No, he didn’t,” said the bug at his side. “He was tossing it to me. Here.”
The bug pushed the brown ball over. He began cleaning Pete’s boot, adding the substance to his sphere.
“That’s manure,” Pete said.
“What do you expect to find a dung beetle pushing along the road — sour lemon balls?”
“Just get it off my foot. Wait a minute!”
“Wait, what? You want it now? Sorry. Finders keepers. . .”
“No, no. Take it off. But — as an expert on such matters, tell me — that’s a cow-pie, isn’t it?”
“Right,” said the bug, adding the last of the material to his ball. “Best kind. It heats up nice and uniform. Not too much. Just right.”
“That means a cow has passed this way.”
The bug chuckled.
“There is a meaningful relationship between the phenomena.”
“Bug, you’re all right,” Pete said, “shit and all. I might have missed this sign if it hadn’t been for you. You see, I am looking for a man in a cart drawn by a cow, an inc –”
“Named Tibor McMasters,” the bug stated, patting the ball smooth and moving ahead once again. “We spoke with him a while back. Our Pilg coincides with his own for some distance.”
Pete recovered his bicycle, twisting its handlebars back into position. Outside of that, there seemed to be no damage. He moved it onto the trail and walked with it, pacing the bug.
“Have you any idea where he is now?” he asked.
“At the other end of the trail,” the bug replied. “With the cow.”
“Was he all right when you talked with him?”
“He was. But his cart was giving him some difficulty. Needed lube for one wheel. Went off looking for some. Headed for the autofac, along with some runners.”
“Where is that?”
“Off over those hills.” It paused to gesture. “Not too far. The trail is marked.”
It patted at the dung ball.
“. . . Every now and then,” it added. “Just keep your eyes open.”
“Thanks, bug. What did you mean when you said you’re on a Pilg? I didn’t know bugs went on Pilgs.”