Stairway to Forever (19 page)

Breathing and moving deliberately, Fitz brought up his weapon and nestled the toe of the butt in his shoulder, just below the clavicle. He released the safety, observed the hairy apparition over the length of the barrel and considered just where it would be

best to place the first—hopefully, the first, last and only—shot. Months of target practice with the piece had given him understanding of and thorough respect for both the weapon and the cartridge—the hollow-nosed, soft-point weighing two hundred and forty grains, leaving the muzzle at a speed of over one thousand, seven hundred feet per second and with an energy of something more than sixteen hundred pounds. Compared to the personal weapons with which he had fought World War Two and the Korean War, this carbine was truly awesome in its potential lethality.

Even so, the relatively short-barrelled weapon did have limitations of accurate fire at distance. This might have been helped had Fitz succumbed to the blandishments of the gun shop that had sold him the piece, then customized it to his personal specifications, and allowed them to install a scope, but he had thought then and still thought now that a carbine was basically a rather short-range weapon, at best, and that a scope was just one more thing he could have break or go out of kilter at a bad moment and of which he knew nothing about repairing.

Recognizing the value of predators in Nature's scheme of things, he did not really want to kill this one, but if it came to a question of his life or its, he would. Nonetheless, he tried a warning shot, hoping that the roar and muzzle blast of the Remington magnum would terrify the whatever-it-was into finding other prey. He aimed the shot just above the thick-haired crest of the things head.

It did stop for a brief moment, just long enough for Fitz to jack another round into the smoking chamber and eject the empty case, but then it came on, relentlessly. He set his jaws and compressed his lips in a tight line; there was no help for it, then, he'd have to kill the beast.

He saw dust puff up as the big, heavy slug struck the animal's body, some eight inches below the left shoulder. To his way of thinking, that should have been a true heart-shot . . . but the Teeth and Legs obviously did not know it, for it just kept coming, gnashing its fearsome fangs, the cuspids looking to be big as a tiger's. So he worked the carbine's action, aimed and fired again at the same spot. . . and with no better results.

Taking a deep, deep breath to try to lay the panic that could easily be fatal under these tight circumstances, Fitz fired yet again, aiming for the head, but hitting the neck and throat, the mushrooming slug visibly tearing out a chunk of flesh and exiting on a fanning spray of blood. The creature squalled and staggered, but still came on, though more slowly. It now was only twenty-five yards away, if that.

"What the hell does it take to kill you, you bastard?" Fitz cried aloud as he chambered yet another round. This time, all else having failed, he aimed much lower. Maybe, if he could knock a leg from under the monster . . . ?

The big bullet had luck riding on it. It struck the left knee and demolished that joint. Again squalling, the runner spun to the left and fell. But it caught itself on its hands and still came on at Fitz, using the two overlong arms and the sound leg for a fast, three-legged gait. However, its position gave Fitz a shot that had been unavailable while it had remained erect on two legs. It having attained the very base of the low hillock, Fitz sent a bullet smashing through the beast's spine, between its shoulder blades, driving it belly-down upon the sandy plain and stopping it for good and all.

The only other sound that the creature made as it lay there, bleeding and twitching, was a long, rat-

tling expiration of air, just before it voided its dung and its black-pupiled, reddish eyes began to glaze in death.

Fitz could only sit on the seat of the bike and watch, trembling like a leaf in reaction to the nerve-shattering experience. He now knew that the .44 magnum carbine was not truly the powerhouse of a weapon he had thought it to be, not for all animals, and that knowledge was, to say the very least, unnerving. He momentarily debated the idea of returning to the ship for the Holland and Holland elephant gun, but decided not to do so, in the end; that would have meant camping the night somewhere out on the sandy plain, the hunting ground of these all but unkillable things.

When his legs once more felt up to the job of supporting him, Fitz swung his leg over the handlebars, stood up and used the carbine to put one more slug into the base of the creature's huge skull before daring to go down and examine it at closer range. Yes, he knew that it now was dead, but did it know and admit that fact?

Even up close, however, he was at a loss to say just what the long-legged, long-armed, hefty, hairy, very toothy beast was. Although the long-fingered hands had opposed thumbs like his own, there still was something about them that put him more in mind of apes or monkeys than of man, and the feet were even more reminiscent of the pongids, being only slightly thickened and flattened duplicates of the hands, the thumbs of them thicker, a little shorter and a little less opposed. But both hands and feet were equipped with flat, thick, sharp nails that looked fully capable of serving the purpose of claws.

The general color of the beast's coat was a dark agouti. Its flat rump was padded with thick, hairless

calliosities, and above them sprouted a hairy tail a good two inches in diameter. That this dead creature had been a male of its species was readily apparent to Fitz. Its head was as big as that of a full-grown lion, though with longer snout, and Fitz doubted that any lion would have been ashamed of the array of orangy-white fangs and other teeth. There could also be no slightest doubt that the thing had been a meat-eater, either, for its dung was full of undigested bits and pieces of bone.

All things about the dead monster considered, Fitz could think only of something vaguely resembling a baboon. Only, who ever had seen or heard of a baboon that stood about six feet tall and hunted singly rather than in a packs?

A cold chill then coursed down Fitz's back. God, if these things do hunt in packs . . .? What if this was only one separated from the pack? If it takes five shots to kill each of them, hell, I'm dead meat.

In the seat of the bike, he stayed in place only long enough to fully reload the carbine, then turned the vehicle about and headed for the hills as fast as he dared to go.

As his bike climbed the rising ground beyond the pool that marked the verge of the sandy plain, the grasses gradually became shorter, less coarse and tough, greener. Shrubs became taller, denser, more colorful, and trees, real trees, began to appear here and there; thanks to his Boy Scout training, he could recognize a few of them—doveplum, myrtle oak, turkey oak, sweetbay and others he foiled after all these years to remember. On the lower reaches of the slope, nearer to the sandy plain, there were a few palms of some sort, but there were none as he ascended higher, just more and larger hardwood trees and some pines of several kinds, junipers and cedars.

As the first slope gained altitude, more and thicker growths of underbrush grew among the tree boles until, finally, he was proceeding only by hacking out a way just wide enough to pass the bike and its attached sidecar, while thanking his stars that he had thought to pack along a machete and a pair of sturdy work gloves to save his hands.

But the heavy brush only ran for a distance of some dozens of yards; then, as abruptly as if cut with a sharp knife, both the incline and the brushy woods gave over to a level plateau on which stately trees sprang up from short, almost lawnlike grass. There was no natural crowding of these trees—oaks, maples, elms, a few chestnuts and ginkos and, within his sight, one huge mimosa covered with a pink froth of flowers—they therefore looked less like a true forest than a carefully tended park.

Startled by the noise of the engine, two deerlike beasts looked up, then burst into full flight, quickly disappearing among the tree trunks and folds of gently rolling greensward. They were clearly not the white-tails of his own world and hunting experience, however; he got a good enough glimpse of the departing creatures to at least tell that much. For one thing, both of them were spotted, though obviously adult, and they bore antlers more like those of a moose than a deer or elk.

Nor were the cervines the only animals to be seen and heard in the parklike expanse. Squirrels scampered up trees, to turn and scold at him from safe altitudes; brown voles and striped chipmunks scurried through the grass and dove into their burrows among the spreading roots of the trees; while high in a persimmon tree, a scaly-tailed opossum blithely ignored the noisy, smelly intruder and went about gorging himself on the rich, yellow-orange fruits.

And there were the birds. He knew that he never had before seen so many different kinds of birds in one place at one time. They flew, they perched, they hopped and stalked through the grass, stopping now and again to peck at something that had caught their avian eye among the stems of the grasses. They were of every conceivable color and hue and of all shapes and sizes—flycatchers, larks, swallows, wrens, thrushes, warblers, sparrows, finches, doves, woodpeckers, clouds of multi-hued parakeets, a tiny hummingbird hovering with blurring wings to sip from mimosa flowerlets, a brace of huge, blue-and-yellow macaws assisting the opossum in stripping the persimmon tree of ripe fruit.

Farther along toward the line of steep, pine-covered hills that filled the northern horizon in the near distance, small green parrots fed on the green-and-purple fruits of berries of some strange tree, and a flock of grey pigeons marched in a skirmish line through the grass beneath and around that tree, policing the area of any scraps that the parrots dropped, the sunbeams flashing on the bright, metallic bits of color that flecked their drab bodies.

Closer still to the upthrust of the hills, the grasses grew higher and, within them, scurried quail and small, fuzzy rabbits. A family of one large and a half-dozen smaller raccoons dove beneath the thorny foliage of a clump of blackberries upon which fruits they had been feeding at the approach of the growling bike, while from out the other side of the spreading thicket, a creature a good deal larger—honey-colored, possibly a hundred pounds in weight, looking a bit like a bear, save that its legs were too long and slender and its body was not hefty enough—hurriedly exited and scampered into the brush of the hillside nearby.

The hill was indeed steep, so much so that by the time he reached its summit-ridge, he was afoot and laboriously pushing the bike by its handlebars. The hill beyond looked even steeper and Fitz decided to look for a place where he could park the bike, then go on afoot. In the trailless wilderness, he needed a place that he could find again with relative ease and one that would, if possible, give concealment and at least a measure of protection from the elements to the machine as well as to those items he would not be able to pack on his back.

Just beyond the summit of the hill, the slope went gently down into a narrow valley, vale, really. A tiny rill threaded its way between grass and wild grain that stood a foot to a foot a half high and it, like the higher grasses below, was aswarm with quail and small rabbits.

Thinking of a belly that soon would be in need of filling, Fitz stopped the bike just beyond the stream, unlimbered the drilling and dismounted. After picking up a pocketful of smooth pebbles from the rill banks, he strolled out into the grasses, holding the gun at the ready in his right hand while he tossed pebbles at likely looking spots, trying to rustle up some quail for his supper.

With a startling burst of noise and a brilliant flash of color, a pheasant-sized bird rose up fast, very fast. But Fitz was a wing-gun of vast experience and, fast as was the big bird, his reactions were just as fast. The drilling boomed once and the barely risen bird dropped in a flutter of gaudy plumage.

"Pheasant-sized, hell," thought Fitz, as he held his kill up by its legs for closer examination, "this is a pheasant, I've seen pictures of them. But how in the devil did a Chinese golden pheasant get here . . . wherever here is?

"Some of the animals I've seen have been ordinary North American varieties. Of course, quite a number haven't, too; those deer, for one instance, not to mention that godawful thing I barely killed in time to keep it from killing me back on the plain. I've never ever seen, read or even heard of such a nightmare beast, anywhere in the world. Then, there're the flying lizards, the gliding jack rabbits, those ostrichlike things with scaly tails and feathery fur and, just now, that critter like a long-legged bear that's been dieting.

"Wherever here is, it's got the damnedest collection of odd fauna of anyplace I've ever heard or read or been."

Some yards up the slope of the next hill, while hacking at vines and undergrowth to make a path up which he could push, pull or tug the bike and sidecar, Fitz uncovered the mouth of a cave. With all the vegetation cleared away, the opening proved to be some two yards in width at its widest and almost that in height. A thin, crumbling, shaly ledge projected out about two feet beyond the opening, which he could immediately see would give added protection from rain to any inhabitant.

Examination of its interior did not show recent signs of any large dwellers, only droppings of beasts no larger than a good-sized rat and even these were dried out and crumbly. A dark smudge, ever so faint, on the top of the opening and the bottom of the ledge, above, might have been soot from a campfire, but if so it was so old as to not really matter. Nonetheless, he took the elementary precaution of scouring the hillside about for good-sized chunks of stone to partially barricade the opening when he was ready to sleep.

While still some davlighl

necessary chores—cleaning and plucking the pheasant, cleaning and lubing his bike and then filling the fuel tank, cleaning and oiling his weapons. The machete, he could hone by firelight. When his initial fire had died to coals, he spitted the bird carcass over it on a green stick supported by a pair of forked sticks, then filled a cup with water from one of his canteens and nestled it into a bed in the coals.

With starlight filtering down through the trees and the fire banked for the night, Fitz blocked the cave entrance with his boulders and the bike, then inflated his air mattress and pulled off his boots and outer clothing. The carbine, the drilling and the machete he laid within easy reach, but the pistol and both knives he took into the sleeping bag with him. Exhausted from the long, hard trip, full of spit-broiled pheasant, bouillion and sweet tea, he was soon asleep.

Sometime in the night, half-asleep, half waking, Fitz knew that there was someone or something in that cave with him. Slowly, he opened the side zip-

Gjr of the sleeping bag; ever so slowly, he put out s hand toward the two shoulder guns, the machete and the flashlight. But instead of cold metal, the searching hand encountered warm, dense, plushy fur and elicited a basso purr.

"Damn it, Tom," he gasped, "you scared the shit out of me! Can't you at least snow the elemental courtesy of letting me know you're coming? Or do you really want to get shot again?"

"Of course not, would you?" replied the cat. "But you see I cannot communicate with you so long as you are sleeping, and I cannot—or would not, rather— awaken you as I did there, in that other world and back in the place on the beach, for I now weigh as much or even more than do you, and you would surely have shot me with your revolver had a heavy bulk suddenly landed upon you."

"Well," muttered Fitz, "you could at least say something, clear your throat, anything, rather than scare me half to death by just slinking in and lying down and waiting for me to wake up on my own, like you did."

"You still don't understand," said the cat. "You think that I'm saying words to you with lips and tongue the way you and your kind do, but I'm not. I am meshing my mind with yours, just as I would do with another cat or most other creatures. You do not truly hear me with your ears, but within your mind.

"You, of course, do say noises that convey thoughts, but I know your meanings from your mind even before I hear those noises with my own ears. Really, you need not make the noises at all, just form the things you wish to impart to me and I will immediately know them, old friend. You will know all this and so much more soon, as you begin to regain and know your inherent powers."

Ever willing to try new things, Fitz slightly thought his words, "I would like to know just what these powers you keep carrying on about are, Tom? Or Tomasina, or whatever. Why don't I just call you Puss? That's a generic, nonsexist term."

"Puss will be all right. It is derived of a Nile Valley name for one of their gods, and Egyptian of that period was almost an old language. But you may still call me Tom, too, if you will be more comfortable in so doing; I don't mind.

"As for your powers, you will know them when your mind and body are ready to make use of them. Simply living here in these hills and valleys, partaking of the waters, breathing the air, eating of the foods, would eventually fully awaken your sleeping powers. But there may not be time, enough time, to take the slower route, and this is why you must find

the Dagda, for he can accelerate the process, can quickly make of you what you truly are and have always been."

"Well, if it's so damned important that I find this Dagda, lead me to him. We can leave here as soon as it's light enough to travel, the two of us, together," thought Fitz.

"No," answered the cat, "I am forbidden to do such a thing, it has always been so. You must find the Dagda, you and you alone, unaided by me or the Keeper. The search and the dangers and trials you will undergo in that search will prove you worthy of what awaits you at its end, will prove that you are truly what you are.

"I may shadow you and your progress, I may visit with you and even give you counsel and encouragement now and then, but I may not guide you directly to the Dagda at his court. You must find him and it at your own risk and peril, being cleansed of impurities and molded into what you must be by your dangers faced and overcome, even as the fire melts and cleanses the copper and tin to make fine, unsullied bronze."

"But Puss," protested Fitz, "I don't even know which direction to travel to find this Dagda, and if these hills go on as far as they seem to, it—that search—could be a lifetime project for me. I'm already well over fifty years old."

There was a hint of a patronizing smile in the cat's thoughts, then, "You do not know just how old you really are, old friend of mine. In a way, you are incredibly ancient, yet in another you are but a little boy-child. I am forbidden to tell you all that I might tell you here and now, but I can say this: do not believe all that you learned as unshakeable, indisputable fact in that other world, for many things—both

there and here—are not always what they seem to those without any powers . . or with few and ill-developed powers.

"As for finding the Dagda, any direction that you travel from here—save back, the way you came—will lead you to him. Dangers and trials will lie in your path, but each will be for you another step closer to your goal. The survival of each of them will help you in the development of your powers. While you may suffer in many strange and terrible ways in undergoing these trials and dangers, you will not die, unless ..."

"Unless?" prompted Fitz. "Unless what?" "I have said . . . almost said too much, my friend," answered the cat, "so I can say no more, at this meeting, save this: Although I am not to guide you, I am allowed to extend to you a certain amount of protection and good advice in what is yet to you an alien land filled with perils you as yet do not, cannot fully imagine or comprehend. Knowing me as they well do, it was wise of them to forbid me, personally, to give you other than counsel, so they have chosen one who will travel with you as long as you are without effective powers and so need him. He will join you at some time within the next couple of days. You will easily recognize him; he is big and blue. "Now, I must depart and you must sleep." When he had awakened in the chilly dawn, raked off the covering earth from the coals and heaped dry squawwood atop them, Fitz began to sort those things he could take and those things he could not or would not need to pack upon his back. Strangely, despite a very hard, very strenuous day yesterday, he felt fitter than within recent memory, but even so, he knew that there was a definite limit to what even men in their prime, in the peak of condition, could

be expected to carry on a hike over rough, roadless terrain. He estimated his own maximum at about sixty pounds and chose accordingly.

Food and condiments, weapons. Although he loved and respected the power of the carbine, he knew that he needed a game-getter more than it, for in a real life-or-death emergency, he would still have the revover which fired the same cartridge and, with its six-inch barrel, could maintain accurate fire to substantial ranges. So he zipped the carbine in its case and stowed it in the cargo sidecar, along with the fuel and tools for the bike, eliminating something more than six pounds from his eventual load.

Ammunition. Shotshells and .22 caliber magnum rimfires for the drilling, a box of the frightfully heavy cartridges for the revolver. He felt a little like a posturing fool to pack in fifty-five rounds of .44 magnums . . . until he recalled that thing he had had to kill yesterday.