Ancient Appetites (2 page)

It didn't roar this time, rushing through the grass as if hunting for prey. Its lights were hooded as it came into sight through the mist, and then Nate was up, swinging the lasso over his head. The beast swerved past him, unprepared for a charge, and Nate pivoted and, with a deft flick of his wrist, looped the lasso over the creature's horns.

He stepped clear of the rope just before the coils started to whip away. The engimal was accelerating into the mist, trying to shed the snare. And that was its mistake.

When the velocycle was forty feet away, the rope snapped taut like a fishing line, anchored by the stout Scots pine. The engimal's head and shoulders were wrenched to a complete stop, and its legs and hips swung around it, throwing it onto its side. The creature lay there, stunned. Nate crossed the distance to it at a full sprint, seizing it by the horns and leaping onto its back. Then he loosened the lasso and cast it off. It would just be a danger to him now.

'Right, let's see what you've got, you beauty!'

The thing didn't need any goading. It thrashed around on the marshy ground, trying to get back onto its wheels. The hind legs holding its rear wheel bent at the knees, pushing its rump up, and its front wheel twisted under it. Leaning on one knee, it flicked itself upright, lifting Nate with it. Its engine roared with outrage, and he held on for grim death as it bucked and pivoted, its spinning back wheel sending up a fountain of mud. The beast reared and then took off across the mountainside.

Nate's pulse was pounding as the wind blew his hat off and rushed past his ears. The ride was rough; the engimal swerved and bounced and tried to make sudden stops, but the swampy ground hampered its efforts. Too much turn and it would slip onto its side, and any attempt to skid to an abrupt halt ended in a long slide. Keeping his arms taut and his body supple, Nate foiled one move after another. But it would take a long time to tire, and he wouldn't. The constant shaking was jarring his senses, and he was in danger of having the teeth jolted out of his head. And all the time, Gerald's words echoed in his mind:
You only have to hang on long enough. Long enough to make it remember.

He hoped it would remember soon. The creature raced back and forth across the ridge, twisting and bucking and tossing him like a rag doll, but he clung on. It jumped off humps and hags, trying to lose him in mid-air, but anything that came close to throwing him also risked turning it on its side again. It would not have that.

The enraged engimal leaped off a low embankment and Nate found himself lifted off its back as it soared, the momentum carrying him into the air. He went with it, following its movement, and as it hit the ground again, he landed back on it . . . his full weight crushing his groin against its metal frame. Pain drove like spears up from between his legs and he let out an embarrassing, high-pitched squeal. But he kept his grip.

The thing picked up speed, and he forced himself to ignore the excruciating pain. Tears were swept from his cheeks by the wind, chilling his face; grass and heather lashed past his legs. Every bounce over the rough ground threatened to reduce him to a blubbering baby, but he held on. The beast slowed, turning in tight jerks, smacking one horn and then another against his thighs, but he refused to let go. It bucked again, twisting and thrashing and throwing its wheels up, but he screamed defiance at it.

'You won't beat me, you cur! You're mine! You're mine!
You're mine,
y'hear me, you goddamned machine?'

His head was spinning, and he tasted blood in his mouth. His body ached and with every move he felt weaker. His hands and arms gripped the beast's horns with a will all their own. The engimal's thrashing seemed to be growing weaker. Nate's head lolled back and he saw stars above him. Stars in the fog. He slumped forward over the creature's back. It was some time before he realized he was no longer moving.

The engine was throbbing quietly beneath him. Nate raised his head and stared. The velocycle was standing still, heat radiating off it, steam hissing wearily from its nostrils.

'Bloody marvellous,' Gerald laughed.

He was leaning against a tree a few yards away, holding a cigarette in one hand.

'Best show I have ever seen, bar none,' he declared, tapping some ash off the gasper. 'My God, we could take it on tour. I haven't had this much excitement since that young Lady Haddington flashed her calves at the spring ball. You're a bloody star.'

'Ah thunk ah bit muh tongue.'

Nate pushed himself upright and worked his jaw around. He still had all his teeth, at least.

His hands were clamped around the creature's horns. Stalks unfolded from the metal bars and locked into place within reach of his fingers. Brake levers. It was giving him its brakes. He had tamed the Beast of Glenmalure.

He squeezed the front brake once, to acknowledge the gesture, and then peeled his hands off the horns and uncurled his stiff fingers.

'Are you going to ride it home?' Gerald asked him, stubbing his cigarette out on the tree trunk and picking up his shotgun.

'I'll have to.' Nate leaned back to ease the pain in his groin. 'Or at least as far as the gig anyway. I don't think I can walk.'

Gerald chuckled, but then his smile faded, and he gazed at the engimal for some time. 'I was right, wasn't I?'

Nathaniel nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'It remembered.'

T
hey made their way down the hillside together, Gerald striding and stumbling, Nate riding the cowed velocycle. As he rode, his hips rocked in reflex. Gerald noticed this and laughed.

'It's not a horse, y'fool! Stop your bouncing. You look like you're trying to rattle the thing! Haven't you bruised your tackle enough for one night?'

Nate chuckled ruefully and settled himself more comfortably on the engimal's back. He had put his rings back on, but he knew he'd need to apply more gold to his skin to speed up his healing processes. And it wasn't on his fingers that he needed it.

'The sooner I get a proper saddle on this thing the better,' he commented, rolling his sore tongue around his mouth.

'You going to make it a mare or a stallion?' Gerald asked.

Engimals were asexual. Their owners referred to them as 'he', 'she' or 'it' depending entirely on their taste.

'Oh, I think I'll leave it as the mysterious cur that it is. And it goes like a flash, so that's what I'll call it.'

'"Flash",' Gerald mumbled, lighting another cigarette. 'I like it. And the girls will go potty over it. They'll be like flies to honey.'

Nate gave a satisfied nod. He eagerly anticipated riding into town on his monstrous new mount. He would be the envy of every man, and an object of wonder for every young filly who saw him. For once he and not his eldest brother, Marcus, would be the talk of the town.

The mist was thinning out as they descended, and through it they saw a figure climbing through the heather towards them. Nate and Gerald exchanged puzzled looks. The man was quite short, with square shoulders and a ramrod-straight back. He wore a long tail-coat and buckled shoes. He made no attempt to greet them until they had stopped before each other.

'Master Nathaniel, welcome home, sir. Master Gerald.' He bowed stiffly, doffing his cap to them.

'Clancy' Nate frowned. 'How did you find us?'

'You make your presence felt wherever you go, sir,' came the reply.

'I didn't think we'd made
that
much noise.'

'Perish the thought, Master Nathaniel.' A pause. 'That's a fine beast, sir.'

His manservant had an ugly face. Bushy, greying eyebrows hung over lined eyes; his wide, prominent cheekbones combined with a nose that had been squashed flat in his youth to give him features like broken stone. He looked weary now, and not from his climb up the mountain. If he felt any surprise that Nathaniel was riding a wild engimal, he didn't show it. Staring at the ground at their feet for a moment, he took a breath and continued.

'Sir, I'm afraid I bring terrible news. Master Marcus is dead. A climbing accident in the Mournes, I'm told. I'm very sorry.'

Nate felt as if the air had been drained from his lungs. 'Are you sure?' he gasped in disbelief. It was immediately replaced by suspicion. 'Who declared him dead? Has Doctor Warburton examined him?'

'Yes, sir. I'm afraid there can be no doubt. There . . . there was extensive damage to the body. There was no chance of recovery. The family are being gathered. Master Roberto will be confirmed as the new Heir after the funeral.'

No member of the Wildenstern family could be confirmed dead until one of the family doctors had examined the corpse. With the Wildensterns' special physiology, the opinions of ordinary doctors could not be trusted. Nate twisted the rings on his fingers. Gerald's hand squeezed his shoulder. He barely felt it.

'I'm sorry, Nate.' He heard his cousin's voice as if from a distance. 'It's the damnedest luck.'

'Are they sure it was an accident?' he demanded.

'Yes, sir. He was with two friends, and was being watched by more people from below. Master Marcus was climbing ahead of the other two when he fell.'

Because of the peculiar traditions of the Wildenstern family, every accident was treated with suspicion. One could never be absolutely sure.

Nate stood there, saying nothing for some time.

'I want to be on my own,' he announced at last, handing his backpack to his manservant. 'Clancy, you go back with Gerald. Tell them I'll be along later.'

And with that, he kicked his heel against the velocycle's side. Snarling eagerly, Flash's wheels gouged holes in the turf and they set off down the hillside. It took only minutes to descend to the bottom and cross a rough stretch of ground, plunging through a stream and scrambling up onto the forest track, spitting mud and pebbles in their wake. Instead of heading down to the road at the bottom of the valley, Nate turned left and raced deeper into the forest.

Marcus was dead. It made no sense. A man like Marcus did not die in some freak accident. His elder brother was the kind of figure that people told stories about, the type of man everyone wanted to have as a friend. He was everything Nate wished he could be. Uncommonly clever, witty, generous and good-natured. Blessed with a natural sense of style, he cut a dashing figure at parties, but was equally at ease in the wild country; when it came to seeking adventure, he had the heart of a Hon.

And he was dead.

Marcus was . . . had been the Heir, groomed from birth to be the future head of the family. He shouldn't even have been in the country. His place was in America now, where the family carried out most of its business. He had come back for a holiday, and to see his kin.

And now Roberto would be Heir to the massive fortune. Poor Berto; he wouldn't take the news well. Like Nate, he had no interest in the family business. A warm-hearted, social animal, he was happiest amongst his friends, or immersing himself in poetry and music.

Nate rode the forest roads for nearly an hour, and then slowed the engimal as the track in front of him withered to a narrow trail in the glow of Flash's eyes. He had no idea where he was going. Bringing the velocycle to a halt, he climbed off, confident now that the creature would not wander. Gazing down at it, he ran his hands over its back, remembering the letter he had received from Gerald; the one where his cousin had explained why he thought this beast
wanted
to be tamed.

Gerald had been studying a new work by a man named Charles Darwin, called
The Origin of Species.
This man, Darwin, claimed that animals were not created in six days along with the Earth as described in the Bible, but had in fact evolved over time, through a process he called 'natural selection'. Gerald said this was not the first time somebody had proposed the idea, but Darwin had put forward such a thorough and convincing case, he had thrown the world of science into turmoil. And Gerald believed that it could mean the end of religion as they knew it by the beginning of the twentieth century.

Darwin's supporters went on to say what he had not dared – that mankind too had evolved and was in fact descended from apes. This didn't go down too well either, and caused much consternation in polite society across the civilized world.

The church had, of course, denounced him as a heretic, despite the fact that he was a devout Christian. They also pointed to engimals as a failing in his logic. These creatures – named for their engine-like internal organs – had long been held as arbitrary, divine creations, because they were clearly machines, and yet were for all intents and purposes alive. Their flesh could heal to some degree, but they could not reproduce like animals, so they had to have been created somehow, and yet their physiology – their
mechanics
– were beyond human understanding. These creatures had not evolved; something or someone had made them, and this offered the most obvious challenge to Darwin's reasoning.

Yes, Darwin conceded in his book, engimals seemed not to have been shaped by their environment, and since any given species of engimal did not seem confined to one geographical area, like marsupials in Australia, or the giant tortoises in the Galapagos Islands, it supported a further theory of his. That they were made by a civilization before that of Man; one which had disappeared before the beginning of recorded history.

This was truly the
de rigueur
topic of conversation at parties, and the cause of much frothing at the pulpit. And Gerald was hooked. He knew that while engimals had been tamed throughout history, the breaking of these animals had been carried out as if they were actually
born
wild. The more he studied their shapes, forms and behaviours, the more he became convinced that they were merely
feral
– that they had been built to perform some function for a master, and had happened to escape captivity, living out the rest of their lives in the wilderness.

Like a farrier judging a horse, Nathaniel ran his fingertips over the creature's curves, feeling the weathered metal, the myriad scrapes in the ceramic, the joints and hinges, the muscular shock absorbers. Its sides were hot from the exercise, and its breath plumed in pale vapour against the dark air. It bulged with power.

Gerald theorized that serving a function for a master should be a natural state for these machines. It only remained to find out what each engimal's function was, and place it in a situation where it would be compelled to carry it out. From drawings of the Beast of Glenmalure, it was clear to him that, like other velocycles, this creature was made to be ridden. Its back was slightly bowed as if to fit a saddle, much like a horse's, and its horns were the perfect shape for handlebars, almost like a bicycle. If it had brake levers, like others of its species, that would be the final proof. All Gerald needed was someone who would be brave, reckless and foolish enough to try and get on this thing's back and stay there long enough for it to remember its true purpose in life.

So he had put pen to paper and presented his thoughts to his cousin, who was away chasing wild engimals around the Dark Continent.

Nathaniel stroked the beast's back and its engine purred. There had been times on the long voyage home when he had doubted himself. With few distractions aboard for a virile young man, he had been troubled by nightmares of injury and failure. There had been every chance that he would ridicule himself, and be maimed or killed in the process. Not wanting to present himself at the house until after the hunt, he had Gerald meet him at the docks and he had booked into a hotel. Two days later, they had the information they needed, and they had set off into the hills.

But now the Beast of Glenmalure was his. And he had been denied his triumphant arrival home atop his prize by the ill-timed demise of his big brother. Even in death, Marcus had stolen his glory.

Despite what Clancy had said, Nate knew that the family would look on this death with great suspicion. They would not believe that this was an accident, any more than he believed it himself. And since everybody knew that he had the most to gain, most of their suspicion would be directed at him.

'Damn you, Marcus,' he breathed through tense jaws. 'Look where you've left me now'

It was getting late, and now that they knew he was back, the family would be expecting him. It was time to go home. He swung his leg over Flash's back and groaned slightly as he made his tender groin comfortable. A long soak in a hot bath was in order, perhaps with some of those Eastern bath salts he'd picked up on the Cape to sooth his frayed nerves . . . and his other bits.

'Right, let's go home, old boy,' he said, feeling suddenly exhausted again. 'And mind the potholes, if you please; I won't be walking right for a week as it is.'