The Gates of Creation

IX

A WAIL CAME DOWN AGAINST THE WIND, AND THEY TURNED TO STARE upriver. Several hundred yards away, an animal tall as an elephant had appeared from around a hill. Now it stood between two large boulders, the head on the end of its long neck much like that of a camel's with antlers. Its eyes were enormous and its teeth long and sharp, a carnivore's. Its body was red-brown and furry and sloped sharply back from the shoulders. The legs were thin as a giraffe's, de­spite the heavy body. They ended in great spreading dark-blue cups. On seeing the cup-feet, Wolff guessed their function. They looked too much like suckers or vacuum pads, which would be one of the few means to enable an animal to walk across this smooth surface. "Stand still," he said to the others. "We can't run; if we could, there'd be no place to go."

The beast snorted and slowly advanced towards them. It swiveled its neck back and forth, turning its head now and then to look behind it. The right front foot and left rear foot raised in unison, the cups giving a plopping noise. These came down to give it a hold in its for­ward progress. Then the left front foot and the right rear one raised, and so it came towards them. When it was fifty yards from them, it stopped and raised its head. It gave a cry that was half-bray and half-banshee wail. It lowered its neck until the jaw was on the ground and then scraped the jaw against the ground. The head slid back and forth on the pale surface.

Wolff thought that this motion could be the equivalent of the paw­ing of dirt of a Terrestrial bull before it charged. He put his beamer on half-power and waited. Suddenly, the creature raised its head as high as it would go, screamed-much like a wounded rabbit-and galloped at them. It was necessarily a slow gallop, since the suction cups did not come off easily. To the humans, it seemed too swift.

Wolff could afford to wait to determine if the beast were bluffing. At twenty yards, he placed the end of the beam at the juncture of neck and chest. Smoke curled up from the red-brown fur, which blackened. The animal screamed again but did not stop its charge. Wolff continued to hold the beam as steadily as he could. Then, see­ing that its impetus might carry it to the point where its fanged head could seize them, he switched to full-power.

The beast gave a last scream; its long thin legs crumpled; its body came down on them. The cups stuck to the ground, the legs cracking beneath the weight, the body settling slowly. The neck went limp and the head lolled, the red-purple tongue sticking out, the hazel eyes glassy.

There was silence, broken by Vala's laugh. "There's our di

"If it's edible," Wolff said. He watched while Vala and Theotormon, knife handled by one foot, stripped off the hide and cut out half-burnt steaks. Theotormon refused to test the meat. Wolff shuffled forward very carefully, but even so his feet went out from under him. Vala and Theotormon, who had gotten to the beast with­out slipping, laughed. Wolff arose and continued his journey. He said, "If no one else dares, I'll try the meat. We can't stand around debating whether it's safe or not."

Vala said, "I'm not afraid of it, just disgusted. It has such a rank odor." She bit into it, chewed with distaste, and swallowed. Wolff de­cided that there was no use his testing it now. With the others, he waited. When a half-hour passed, and Vala showed no ill effects, he started to eat it. The others shuffled or crawled to the carcass and also ate. There was not too much they could stomach, since most of the meat was charred, leaving only a narrow area where the heat had cooked or half-cooked the flesh.

Wolff borrowed Theotormon's knife and cut out other steaks. Re­luctantly, because he wished to conserve the power of the beamer, he cooked the steaks. Then they each took an armful and began to march down the river. Wolff lingered for a while, considering the possibility of severing the suction-pads and using them for his loco­motion. He gave up the idea after feeling the thickness of the bones of the legs and the toughness of bone and cartilage at juncture of pad and leg. Vala's sword might do the job, but its edge would be too blunted for use afterward.

At the end of a two-mile crawl, they came to a group of bushes near the riverbank. These were three feet high and mushroom in shape, the upper part spreading out far from the slender base. The branches were thick and corkscrew and, like the trees, grew fuzz. At close range, the fuzz looked more like slender needles. There were also large dark-red berries in clusters at the ends of the branches.

Wolff picked one and smelled it. The odor reminded him of pecan nuts. The skin was smooth and slightly moist.

He hesitated about biting into the berry. Again, it was Vala who dared the strange food. She ate one, exclaiming all the while over its deliciousness. A half-hour went by, during which she ate six more. Wolff then ate several. The others picked them off. Palamabron, the last to try them, complained that there were not many left for him.

Vala said, "It is not our fault that you are such a coward."

Palamabron glared at her but did not answer. Theotormon, think­ing that here he had found someone who would not dare to answer him back, took up the insults where Vala left off. Palamabron slapped Theotormon in the face. Theotormon bellowed with rage and leaped at Palamabron. His feet slipped out and he skidded on his face into Palamabron's legs. Palamabron went down like a bowling pin. He slid sidewise, out of reach of Theotormon's flailing flipper. Both made a frenzied but vain effort to get at each other's throat.

Finally, Wolff, who had not shared the scornful laughter of the others, called a halt. He said, "If these time-wasting displays of childishness continue, I'll put a stop to them. Not with the beamer, since I don't care to use up power on the likes of you. We'll just go on without you or send you away. We have to have unity and a minimum of discord. Otherwise, Urizen will have the pleasure of seeing us destroy ourselves."

Theotormon and Palamabron spat at each other but quit their struggles. Silently, in the pale purple shade of the moon overhead, they continued to slide their feet forward. The night had brought an end to the silence. They heard bleatings as of sheep and bellowings as of cattle from a distance. Something roared like a lion. They passed another clump of bushes and saw small bipedal animals feeding off the berries. These were about two and a half feet tall, brown-furred, and lemur-faced. They had big rabbit ears and slit eyes. Their upper legs ended in paws; their lower, in suction discs. They had short scarlet tails, like a rabbit's. On seeing the human beings, they stopped eating and faced them, their noses wiggling. After being convinced that the newcomers were no danger, they resumed eating. But one fellow kept his eyes on them and barked like a dog at them.

Presently, a four-legged animal the size of a Norwegian elkhound came around a low hill. It was shaggy as a sheep-dog, yellowish, and built like a fox. At the ends of its feet were thin skates of bone on which it raced towards the bipeds. These barked in alarm and all took off in a body. They made swift progress, despite the pads, but the skate-wolf was far faster. The leader of the bipeds, seeing that they had no chance, dropped behind until he was even with the slowest of his charges. He shoved against the laggard, knocking him over, then he ran on. The sacrifice screamed and tried to get back up on its suckers, only to be knocked down again by the snarling skate-wolf. There was a brief struggle, ending when the wolf's jaws closed on the biped's throat.

Wolff said, "There's your explanation for the scratches we've seen now and then on the surface. Some of these creatures are skaters."