Part 28 (1/2)
”Yes, I did.”
”I have an interest in parasites, and I have come here to study them.”
Beck looked at her. The only parasites he knew anything about were sheep ticks.
Erlin went on, ”There is a parasite here with a very strange life-cycle. Its eggs hatch out in the mountain springs.”
”I don't see the relevance.”
”Well, parasites have all sorts of strange strategies for survival, breeding ... sometimes they use more than one host, though I don't think this one does. There's one on earth that actually gets into an ant, makes the ant climb to the top of a blade of gra.s.s and there cling on until a pa.s.sing sheep eats it. The sheep is its next host you see - ”
”On Earth sheep eat ants?”
”No, gra.s.s.”
Beck snorted his disbelief. ”If you're not going to tell me why you want a blood sample, just say so. I don't need this bulls.h.i.+t. I had enough of it in the Church.”
”No, really, I'm not lying.”
Just then there came a coughing snort from the shade of the heather trees. This was followed by a low moan and a raspy panting. Erlin pulled her weapon from its holster and looked around carefully. Beck glanced with idle curiosity at little flas.h.i.+ng red lights on the gun. After a moment he said, ”No need to worry yet. That's only a sugar dog. Save your worrying for when we get beyond the trees. It's flockland there.” To himself he muttered, ”Gra.s.s indeed.”
The sugar dog came out of the trees far to their right, paralleling their course. Erlin stared at it in fascination, took a device from one of her pockets and pointed it at the creature.
”What are you doing?”
”Recording images of it.”
Beck studied the glinting little device she held. It was just the kind of thing Morage would like to steal. How it must burn him that she had escaped him.
”Why?” he asked her.
”I've never seen one before. It looks like a cross between a bloodhound and a bull frog.”
The words were familiar to Beck, but not in that combination. Bull he knew as a word for untruth, just as he knew of the little black frogs that lived in the southern swamps, that 'hound' was another word for dog, and that 'blood' was red in his veins and green in the translucent flesh of sugar dogs. So much was different about Earth. Perhaps if he had not been so wrapped up in his own concerns he would have been fascinated by this. Perhaps she hadn't been lying about the sheep.
The sugar dog huffed and wuffled through the leaves near them as they followed the trail, then it moved away to the West. In the distance, on the faces of the hills, flocks of sheep could be seen hunting, but they were no danger to sugar dogs. Sugar dogs were as poisonous as the plants they ate.
”Do you know why they are called sugar dogs?” Erlin asked.
”Because they like sweets,” said Beck.
”Sugar kills them though.”
”Yes, it also kills anyone caught feeding it to them.”
Erlin waited for an explanation.
He told her, ”They are protected by Church and civil law. Anyone caught feeding any form of sugar to a sugar dog is executed by posting.”
”Posting?”
”Chained to a flockland post.”
”Sorry, I don't understand.”
”You will soon.” He pointed ahead to a distant object jutting up out of the leaves. They walked in silence until they reached it. Here was a steel post cemented into the ground, from which hung a chain and a steel collar. All around it the leaves were trampled and scattered with chewed human bones. At the base of the post lay half a human skull that had been sc.r.a.ped empty. Erlin quickly grasped what it meant to be posted.
”The sheep don't attack Baptisers, so the Church tells us. I don't believe everything the Church says.” With that Beck drew his gun and checked it, as he had done a number of times since leaving the church. He also made sure the sh.e.l.ls in his belt were easily accessible, despite the Gurnard pot hanging at his side.
”Isn't that a bit awkward?” asked Erlin, indicating the pot.
”The discomfort would be greater if I did not carry it,” said Beck. ”Let's keep moving.” He gestured with his gun and then kept it in his hand as they continued walking.
The sun was a blue-green ellipse on the horizon with the box moon in silhouette just beside it, when they saw their first sheep close to. A flock of twenty of them had trapped a ground skate and were levering up its wings with their claws and biting off chunks of fishy flesh.
”Sheep are nothing like this on Earth,” said Erlin, then regretted speaking when two sheep turned their curled-horned heads towards her and exposed yellow fangs.
”Quiet. Keep walking,” Beck whispered.
The sheep returned to their easy meal and did not pursue.
”Their heads are like the heads of Earth sheep and they have hooves on their feet, but on Earth, sheep are quadruped. They don't have claws.” Erlin s.h.i.+vered. ”They're like something out of Christian fable: Satan, or satyrs.”
”You've never seen our sheep before?”
”No.”
”Surely, when you came to the church?”
”I was dropped off there by air transport directly from the port.”
Beck was vaguely aware that somewhere there was a s.p.a.ceport, and he had often seen the transports flying overhead and the occasional flash of a star drive starting up out beyond the moon. It had been his intention to find out about these things. Then the impulse had taken away all his choices. It made him sad and it made him angry. I am only just become a man, he thought, and my life is not to be used to my purpose. He considered suicide and awoke pain in his guts.
”Tell me about parasites,” he said.
”Will you listen?”
”I will there,” he said, pointing at a low stone sheep sanctuary - a building that in another place might have used for protecting sheep from predators, but not here.
Within the sanctuary, c.o.ke was provided for a fire but there was no kindling to set it burning. Erlin started the fire with something that flared red and left burning bars of afterimages in Beck's eyes. He placed the Gurnard pot near the fire and removed the bung. A dead-fish smell filled the sanctuary, but movement in the pot showed that the Gurnard was not dead. Thankfully the smell of the burning c.o.ke soon displaced that smell. Beck and Erlin sat then before the fire and ate from their respective provisions.
”You know, any fish from Earth would have died in such a container.”
”Why?”
”Earth fish require oxygenated water. Your Gurnards require no oxygen whatsoever. Oxygen is in fact deleterious to them, which is why they seek out still water at the end of their journey.”
”Journey?”
”I was going to tell you about parasites.”