Part 6 (2/2)
What a fantastic creature, thought Kettridge. He lives on a world where the heat will fry a human and s.h.i.+vers in fear at lightning storms.
A strange compa.s.sion came over Kettridge. How very much like a native of Earth this creature was. Governed by its stomach and a will to survive. A religion founded in fear and nurtured on terror.
Lightning: the beast thought of it as a Screamer From the Skies. The occasionally glimpsed sun: The Great Warmer.
Kettridge pondered on the simplicity and common sense of Lad-nar's religion.
When the storms gathered, finally building up enough charge to begin the lightning and thunder, Lad-nar knew the cold would set in. Cold was anathema to him. He knew the cold sapped him of strength, the lightning struck him down. So he stole a cat-litter and hid for the weeks it would take the gigantic storms to abate. The high body heat of the creature dictated that it have much food to keep it alive when the temperature went down. When a cat-litter wasn't handy, why then just kill and eat an alien ecologist. Kettridge found the last thought standing out in his mind.
This was no stupid beast, Kettridge reminded himself.
His religion was a sound combination of animal wisdom and native observation. The lightning killed: don't go abroad in the storms. The storms brought cold: get food and stay alive.
It was so simple to a.n.a.lyze the situation. Simple, yes, but impossible to get himself out of it!
Not that I care, Kettridge mused.
I stopped caring long ago. The urge to survive? He laughed aloud. To his mind came the picture of himself. Thin, weary-looking. As though a world of agony had seeped like sand into his bones. His face was a lined and broken thing. It was tired. From the gray hair to the cleft chin. From the broken bridge of the aquiline nose to the thinned, parched lips. I'm older than fifty-six, he thought. There were men of fifty- six, he knew, who were still following the trails of the young.
I'm too sorry for myself.
It seemed strange. He had never churned these thoughts around in just this manner before. He had been prepared, almost eager, to let himself be beaten down, to be trampled under feet of sadness and self- pity. He was waiting for the creature to waken, then it would be at an end...
It was indeed strange how an odd situation could bring a man to a realization of himself.
Here is a chance, he thought. The words came unbidden.
In just these words. Here is a chance. Here was a chance not only to survive-something he had long since stopped doing consciously-but a chance to reinstate himself. If only in his own mind. Here was an aborigine, member of a dying race, a cowering beast of the caves, afraid to walk in the storms, in fear of the lightning, shackled by a primitive religion. Doomed forever to the land, never to see the sky.
In that split moment Ben Kettridge devised a plan to save his soul.
There are times when men sum up their lives. Take accounting and find themselves wanting. This was one of those times. So hopeless did it seem, that Ben Kettridge told himself, This is a chance.
Lad-nar suddenly became a symbol of all the people who had been lost in the Ma.s.s Death. In the mind of an old and tired man, many things are possible.
I must get out of here! Ben Kettridge told himself, over and over, almost as an incantation.
But more than that he knew he must save the poor hulk before him. And in saving the animal, he would save himself. Lad-nar had no idea what a star was. Well, Ben Kettridge would tell him. Here was a chance! Here was a chance!
The old man slid up flat against the wall. His back was strained with the effort to sink into the stone. Watching the alien beast come to wakefulness was almost the epitome of horror.
The huge body tossed and heaved, then rose. Directly. It sat erect from the thin, pinched waist, raising the ma.s.sive wedge-shaped chest, the hideous head, the powerful neck and arms. A thin trickle of sleep-spittle dripped from a corner of its fanged mouth. It sat up and Thought: Lad-nar hungers.
”Oh, G.o.d in Heaven, please let me have time! Please allow me this-this-little thing! I beg you!”
Kettridge found himself with hands clasped on his chest, face raised to the roof of the cave. For the first time in his life he felt tears of appeal on his cheeks.
He spoke to G.o.d with the tongue of a man who has never known a G.o.d. Science had been his deity-and that G.o.d had turned against him. He spoke from a heart so long full of misery and wandering it never knew it could speak to a G.o.d.
Thought: You speak to the Lord of the Heaven. Lad-nar seemed awed. It watched, its huge brilliant eyes suddenly unslitted and wide.
Kettridge thought at the beast.
Lad-nar! I come from the Lord of the Heaven. I am a G.o.d greater than the G.o.d in the Heaven! I can show you how to walk in the storms! I can show you how to The creature's roar deafened Kettridge. Along with it came the mental scream! The old man felt himself lifted off the floor by the force of that blow to the mind, and hurled against the rocks. His body burned and ached from the pounding, but he knew it had been his own reflexes that had done it.
The aborigine leaped to his feet, threw his taloned hands upward and bellowed his rage.
Thought: you speak that which is Forbidden! You say that which is Untrue and Unclean! No human walks when the Essence-Stealer speaks in the night! You are a fearful thing! Lad-nar is afraid!
”Heresy. I've spoken heresy!” Kettridge wanted to rip off the metal-plastic hood and tear his tongue from his own mouth. This was the way he had begun his own salvation! Heresy! Thought: yes, you have spoken that which is Unclean and Untrue!
Kettridge cowered in fear. The beast was enraged. How could it be afraid, when it stood there so powerful and so ma.s.sive?
Thought: yes, Lad-nar is afraid! Afraid! Afraid!
Then the waves of fear hit him. Kettridge felt his head begin to throb. The tender fiber of his mind was being twisted and seared and buffeted. Washed and burned and scarred forever with the terrible all- consuming fear the animal had coursing through itself.
Stop, stop, Lad-nar! I speak truth! I speak truth!
He spoke, then. Softly, winningly, trying to convince a being that had never known any G.o.d but one that howled and slashed in streamers of electricity. He spoke of himself. He spoke of his powers. He spoke of them as though he believed he had them. To himself he thought the things he was saying. He built himself a glory on two levels.
Slowly, Lad-nar calmed, and the waves of fear diminished to ripples. The awe and trembling remained, but there was a sliver of belief.
Kettridge knew he must work on that.
All too easily, down somewhere in his own mind, came back the picture of that huge creature, ripping and eating, ripping and eating...
”I come from the Heaven-Home, Lad-nar. I speak in the words of a G.o.d, for I am a G.o.d. A stronger G.o.d than the puny Essence-Stealer you fear!” As if to punctuate his words, a flash of lightning struck just outside the cave, filling the hollow with fury and light.
Kettridge continued, spilling the words faster and faster. ”I can walk abroad in the storm, and the Essence-Stealer will not harm me. Let me go out and I will show you, Lad-nar.” He was playing a dangerous hand; at any moment the beast might leap. It might dare to venture that leap hoping Kettridge was speaking falsely, rather than incur the wrath of a G.o.d he knew was dangerous.
Kettridge continued talking.
”Let me out, Lad-nar. Let me walk from this cave. I will show you.” He edged toward the cave's mouth, his hands in their metal-plastic gloves flat to the wall.
He knew the insulated suit would protect him from the viciousness outside.
Thought: stop!
”Why, Lad-nar? I can show you. I can show you how to walk in the night when the Essence- Stealer screams, and you can scream back at him and laugh at him, Lad-nar.” He didn't know why he was talking, he could have thought it just as well but there was a rea.s.surance in the sound of his voice in the cave.
The old man felt the weariness seeping through his body. Oh, if I was a younger man. If it wasn't so late!
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