Eye of Cat Part 9

If the hidden sources of his feelings did equal what Cat had been talking about, he had been running toward death ever since Dora's fall and - Dora? How did she figure into this part? No, let the dead rest and not trouble the living. It would be enough to admit that all of the changes in society itself - a society into which he had not been born but of which he had tried to make himself 'a part - were sufficiently overwhelming to have brought him to this point. Take it from there. What next?

What did he really want? And what should he do about it?

Suddenly a memory unfolded, startling him with a knowl- edge he had possessed all along. After the shock of the recognition he grew depressed, for he knew then that Cat's words had been true.

Each time that he had fled by means of a trip-box he had had his ultimate destination at the back of his mind. All of the jumping about he had done before heading for his goal had been as nothing. Cat had needed but to read that final destination, to go there and begin patrolling the city, hunting first his mind and then his body. This seemed more than

carelessness on his part. It was as if he had intentionally given himself to Cat and kept the information hidden from his own scrutiny. How could he trust himself to do anything now?

On the other hand, doing nothing could prove equally fatal. He was surprised at his sudden willingness to admit to a hidden death wish. He was determined not to yield to it, however, not in this duel with Cat. He puffed on his pipe and listened to the birds.

Had he this destination in mind when he had departed Kenmare on the first of this latest series of jumps? It seemed that he had....

All right. He rose. He had to a.s.sume that Cat was aware of it and could put in an appearance at any time. The longer he remained here, the greater the beast's chances of finding him unprepared. He dusted off his trousers and muttered "d.a.m.n!" He still needed time to plan.

He slapped the side of the tree and headed across the picnic area toward the trail. A huge crow darted past him and he halted. Thoughts of Black-G.o.d tumbled through his mind, and of the ways of the hunt.

The only trip-station in the area was the one he had used.

Cat could emerge there at any moment, perhaps just as he was approaching. No, that would not do. Because he was defenseless, it was prudent to continue the flight. But the risk involved in attempting it right now seemed too high.

IT CAME DOWN FROM UTAH.

and Colorado, and it was big and black and nasty. When it attacked, the people fled for cover and waited. It lashed and splashed and filled gullies. From Lake Powell through the Carrizos it boiled and roared. It licked s.h.i.+prock with tongues of flame. The patches of white in the high places were diminished beneath its slavering. It rolled across the land and hauled itself over the mountain peaks. Its breath was fast and sharp, snapping limbs from pine trees, twisting

pinons. Arroyos became muddy snakes. There were mists, and in some places rainbows. The thunder no longer slept.

Legends could no longer be told.

The Keeper of Clouds has unpenned his charges.

The Keeper of Winds has unlocked his gates. - The Keeper of Waters has opened the sky.

The Keeper of Lightnings waves his lances.

The Keeper of Satellites has observed, "One hundred percent of probability of precipitation."

HE EMERGED FROM THE TRIP-.

box and looked about. He stood for a time as if listening.

Then he dropped to all fours and entered the forest, his form altering as he advanced. He had detected the mind which he sought. It was filled again with the feelings of that chanting and all of the obscure imagery a.s.sociated with it. But while this masked the underlying thoughts it in no way obscured the direction and location of the thinker. Finding the body should not be all that difficult.

His movements grew more and more graceful as the lines of his body flowed to a.s.sume the catlike form he favored.

His eye sparkled like a liquid thing. His incisors overhung his lower lip by several inches. They, too, sparkled. His pa.s.sage among the great petroleum trees was almost sound- less. Whenever he froze and sought impressions he became almost invisible within the dappled patterns of light and shadow.

On one such occasion a leaf fell. Cat pounced upon it, a living blur. He straightened then and shook his head. He stared at the leaf. Then he started forward again.

Perhaps this should be the time. The game was not prov- ing as complex as he had hoped. If there were no interesting fight or flight, if nothing exciting happened this time, it might be best to conclude things here. The hunter seemed to have

lost his edge, seemed weary, too troubled to provide the necessary struggle.

He glared for a moment at the black bird which cried out above his head, circling and then darting away.

Come back, dearie. Just for a moment. Come look again.

But the bird was gone.

Cat flicked his wide tail and pressed on across a low spongy section of forest floor. It was not that much far- ther.... He increased his pace and did not slow again until he was near to the picnic area. Then he studied and circled and studied again.

The man was just sitting there, his back against a picnic bench, smoking his pipe, his mind filled with that senseless chant. It was almost too easy, but this was the way he had read him earlier: willfully careless, ready to die. Still...

There was no sport in it. A few taunts, and perhaps he will bolt.

You see. It is as I said. When you run from me you approach me. Why was 1 not peed at some other time, when .

you still cared to live?

The hunter did not reply. The chant continued.

So you have admitted the truth. You accept what I told you. Is that your death song that you sing?

Again there was no response.

Very well. I see no reason to prolong things, hunter.

Cat pa.s.sed among the trees and entered the cleared area.

Last chance. Will you not at least draw your knife?

Billy stood and turned slowly to face him.

At last. You are awake. Are you going to run?

Billy did not move. Cat bounded forward. There followed a splintering sound.

When the ground gave way beneath the beast, the moment was frozen in Billy's mind. He had had some doubt as to the appropriate width when wielding the power shovel to dig the trench which encircled him. As its covering gave way and Cat vanished below he was pleased that his estimate had proven adequate. He moved immediately to bridge it with the picnic table.

You will not hold me here for long, hunter, Cat told him from below.

Long enough, I hope.

Billy crossed over the trench and emptied the wastebin against the trunk of a nearby tree. He struck a light and set it to the heap of papers.

What are you doing?

If one of these trees goes up, the whole area burns, he said. They're all connected below and full of inflammables.

You won't make it back to the box if you let this burn.

Billy turned and began running.

Congratulations, Cat told him. You have made it interest- ing again.

Good-bye, Billy said.

Not quite. We've an appointment.

He ran on until the trip-box was in sight. Rus.h.i.+ng into it, he inserted his strip, activating the control and punched coordinates at random without looking at them.

You have bought respite, Cat told him. But at another level you have betrayed yourself again.

Have I? Billy answered, as the forest blurred.

He walks in a twilight land amid jungle-shrouded cities. The cries of unseen birds come to him across the s.h.i.+mmering air. It is pleasantly warm, and there is a smell of dampness and decay. His path is a glistening ribbon among ruins which appear less and less ruined as he advances.' He smells burning copal and his guide gives him a strange beverage to drink. Colors flash beneath his feet and his way becomes bright red. They come at length to a pyramid atop which a blue man is held stretched across a stone by four others. Billy watches as a man in a high headdress cuts open the blue man's chest and removes the heart. He sips his drink and continues to watch as the heart is pa.s.sed to another man who uses it to anoint the faces of statues. The body is thien cast down the steps to where a crowd of people waits. There, another man very carefully removes the skin, its blue now streaked with red, dons it like a robe and commences dancing. The other people now fall upon the remains and begin eating, save for the hands and the feet, which are removed and set aside. His guide departs for a moment to join the crowd, returning moments later, bringing him something and indicating that he should eat. He chews mechanically, was.h.i.+ng it down with

the balche. He looks up, realizing suddenly that Dora is his guide. "On the fifth day of Uayeb my true love gave to me..." She is not smiling. Her face is, in fact, without expression as she turns away, beckoning for him to follow.

The blood-red way leads at length to a gaping cave-mouth.

They halt before it, and he can see that within there are statues at either hand - fanged, scrolls upon their foreheads, dark circles about their eyes. As he stares, he becomes aware of people moving about slowly inside. They are placing bowls of copal, tobacco and maize upon a low altar.

They are chanting softly in words which he does not under- stand. She leads him across the threshold, and he sees now that the place is illuminated by candlelight. He smells incense as he stands listening to the prayers. He is given to drink a beverage of corn gruel and honey at each pausing between rituals. He sits with his back against the rock, listening, tracing circles upon the poor with his fingertip. He is given another gourd of balche to drink. As he raises it to his lips he looks upward and pauses. It is not Dora who has brought him the drink but a powerful youth, clad in the old manner of the Dineh. At this person's back there stands another man - larger and even stronger-looking. He is simi- larly garbed, and the resemblance between the two is strik- ing. "You seem familiar," Billy tells them. The first man smiles. "We are the slayers of the giants Seven-Macaws, Zipacna and Cabracan," he answers. "It was we," says the other, "who journeyed down the steps to Xibalba, crossing the River of Corruption and the River of Blood. We followed the Black Path to the House of the Lords of Death." The other nods. "We played strange games with them, both winning and losing," he says. And they say in unison, We slew the Lords Hun-Came and Vucub-Came and ascended into light." Billy sips his balche. "You remind me," he says to the younger one, "of Tobadzichini, and you," to the other, "of Nayenezgani, the Warrior Twins of my people, as I always thought they must look." The two smile. "This is true," they say, "for we get around a lot. Down here we are known as Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Rise now to your feet and look off yonder into the darker places." He gets up and looks to the rear of the grotto. He sees there a trail leading downward. Dora stands upon it, staring at him. "Follow,"

says Hunahpu. "Follow," says Xbalanque. She begins to move away. As he turns and follows after her, he hears the cry of a bird....

BILLY STEPPED FROM THE TRIP-.

box and looked about. It was dark, with a tropical brilliance to the stars. The air was cool and damp, bearing smells he had long a.s.sociated with jungle foliage. The coolness seemed to indicate that the night was nearing its end.

He pa.s.sed beyond the station's part.i.tioning, where he read the sign which identified it. Yes. Things were as he had sensed them. He had come to the great archaeological park of Chichen Itza.

He stood upon a low hill. Narrow trails led off in many directions. These paths were faintly illuminated, and here and there he saw people pa.s.sing slowly along them. He could discern the ma.s.sive dark forms of the ancient struc- tures themselves, more solid and deep than the night's lesser gloom. Periodically, some portion of ruin would be bril- liantly lighted for several minutes, for the benefit of night- viewers. He recalled reading somewhere that this ran through a regular cycle, its schedule available at various points along the way, along with computerized commentary and the answering of questions concerning the place.

He began walking. The ruin was big and dark and quiet and Indian. It comforted him to pa.s.s along its ways. Cat could not find him here. This he knew. He also understood Cat's parting words. He had betrayed himself, in a sense, for his final destination had been present in his mind even as he had struck the random coordinates which had brought him here. When he finally journeyed to that last place it would be to face his enemy.

He laughed softly then. There was nothing to prevent his remaining here until Cat's time limit had run out.

Some of the more fragile ruins he pa.s.sed were protected by force fields, others permitted entry, climbing, wandering.

He was reminded of this as he brushed against a force screen - soft, harder, harder, impenetrable. It reminded him of Cat's cage back at the Inst.i.tute. Cat's had also been electrified, however, providing shocks which increased in direct proportion to the intensity of the pressure from

within. Cat had seldom brushed against it, though, because of his peculiar sensitivity to electrical currents. In fact, that was how Billy had captured him - accidentally, when Cat had collided with the electrified force screen which had surrounded one of the base camps during an attempt at backtracking and ambush. The memory suddenly gave rise to a new train of thought.

A light flashed on far to his right, and he halted and stared.

He had never been here before, but he had seen pictures, had read about the place. It was the Temple of the Warriors that he beheld, a bristling of columns before it, their shadows black slashes upon its forward wall. He began to move toward it.

The light went out before he got there, but he had the location as well as the image fixed in his mind. He continued until he was very near, and when he discovered that no force field blocked his way he pa.s.sed among the styli and began to climb the steep stair on its forward face.

When he reached the level area at the top he located himself to what he took to be the east and sat down, his back against the wall of the smaller structure situated at the center. He thought of Cat and of the death wish that was defeating him because he could not adapt, because he was no longer Navajo. Or was that true? He thought of his recent years of withdrawal. Now they seemed filled with ashes. But his people had many times tasted the ashes of fear and suffering, sorrow and submission, yet they had never lost their dignity nor all of their pride. Sometimes cynical, often defiant, they had survived. Something of this must still be with him, to match against his own death prayer. He dozed then and had a peculiar dream which he could not later recall in its entirety.

When he woke the sun was rising. He watched the waves of color precede it into the world. It was true that there was nothing to prevent his remaining here until Cat's time limit had run out. He knew that he would not do this. He would go on to face his chindi.

... After breakfast, he decided. After breakfast.

"I DON'T CARE!" MERCY.

Spender said, raising the bottle with one hand, the gla.s.s with the other. "I've got to have another drink!"

Elizabeth Brooke laid a hand upon her shoulder.

"I really don't think you should, dear. Not just now, anyhow. You're agitated and -"

"I know! That's why I want it!"

With a snapping sound, the bottom fell out of the bottle.

The gin raced shards of gla.s.s to the floor. The odor of juniper berries drifted upward.

"What ..."