Anthonology

ENCOUNTER

I had earned a total of $160 in my trial year of writing, October 1962 to October 1963. (Twenty years later, October 1982, my fantasy novel Ogre, Ogre, written with an Ogre as the hero because someone had called me an ogre at conventions—I had never even been to a convention—became my first to make the New York Times bestseller list. Thereafter I declared that to be the Month of the Ogre, Oct-ogre.) I was technically a success, but that just wasn't enough money to live on. So, reluctantly, I retired as a full time writer and went back to school to become an English teacher. What a terrible fate! But I continued to write and market stories part time, and every few months another sale would develop. "Encounter" was the fourth; the third was a collaborative story published in Analog (yes, I finally made it there!), excluded from this solo volume. I had read someone else's story that had a wall, the story didn't go the way I expected, so I wrote my own story with a wall—and a message. Yes, I'll tell you the message; I'm not shy about that sort of thing. It is that man is not made for paradise, any more than a tiger is. My stories do tend to have messages, which seems to infuriate some critics. I see nothing wrong with entertainment, escape from mundane concerns, humor—or meaning, and I don't really understand the attitude of those who feel otherwise.

In the evening of the twentieth day, Abe Sale came across the wall. On either hand a wide bare rift extended, north and south: behind him Omega Avenue retreated toward the dawn, all the way to the Atlantic. Ahead the blank concrete severed the right of way; he could not pass.

In the days of automation and leisure, it was Sale's habit to walk the endless city streets, venting in this asocial manner his seething urge for expression. His body was strong with many miles of foot labor, twenty in a day, questing through a metropolitan purgatory. Because there were half-crazed animals wandering in the plains of the empty parking acreages, he was armed; because it grew cold at night, he was clothed; because no normal person would open the ground-level apertures, he was self-reliant.

This was rough territory. The dogs were small, but the packs were large, and not everything fled at sight of a weapon. Even the great rats were restrained, here, keeping to the shadows; something was holding them back, and Sale doubted that it was fear of Man.

It took a resourceful stranger to survive in the open municipality. Sale survived. Armed with his heavy steel staff, he feared nothing on the streets so far; but there were times when retreat was expedient, and he was not a fool. Now, having traveled four hundred miles west on Omega, he had encountered a phenomenon that defied credibility: the end of it.

He studied the wall, and found that it was high: a sheer cliff of stone and steel and mortar, not to be scaled by naked hands. It was as tall as a building, traveling as far as the eye could see; and the moat that the pavement formed beside it prevented access from any neighboring roof.

Sale could not tarry here; not far behind was a pack, lean and hungry. He had to have a place to sleep in relative safety.

He turned the corner, south, to pace the wall. A block away, another wanderer turned the corner north; thus they came upon each other by surprise. The other creature was a solitary feline of enormous size. Never as plentiful as the dogs, and always alone, these cats represented no threat to him. In fact, with their depredations upon the rodents, they were a greater friend to man than the hounds; more than once he had lent a helping blow on behalf of a cornered member. But this—surely this was the king of cats. It was tremendous.

It advanced, and so did Sale. If it was to be a challenge for the right of way, his staff would speak for him. Against a canine pack, Sale retreated; against a single animal he did not. Yet he wondered why the striped feline refused to give way. Why did it come at him in the center of the street, instead of lying in wait, in ambush? What was driving it?

His eyes were on the cat; but he noticed that all rats had vanished. One mystery had been solved; rats were not fools either. This was no ordinary tabby.

They sparred, the cat moving sinuously, huge muscles rippling under the loose skin; he with his staff in two hands, an effective weapon They closed; the cat made a feint, one paw batting at the pole, but Sale was on guard. Even now he was not afraid; there was an exhilaration about single combat that warmed his body, fired his imagination.

Ever alert for the danger behind, Sale suddenly tightened. He knew without turning that the trailing pack had arrived; he could hear the yips and growls as it massed. It had cut off his escape; he would have to kill at once and get away, before the canines fell upon him.

Behind the cat, more dogs turned the corner. This pack was unusually large, he thought, to cover two blocks. But no—the ones in front were of a different breed. Squat and hairy, with long snouts—not dogs at all, but pigs! Wart hogs, peccaries, or something of the sort. Strange indeed.

Sale had not forgotten for a moment the immediate antagonist; he identified both dogs and pigs while cautiously circling the big cat. Now two thoughts came together: the pigs were not a North American breed, and neither was the cat. He was dealing with a literal tiger! How it came to be here he had no time to wonder; if he did not dispatch it soon, the dogs would tear them both to pieces.

"And the hogs were after you," he said to the cat, in momentary camaraderie. "You killed one of their number, and after that your life was forfeit. You knew there was no retreat!"

The clamor behind him grew. The dogs were about to charge. Simultaneously the pigs advanced, short legs and hoofs beating a staccato on the pavement. Either group was formidable; together they spelled doom. He had to escape.

His eye caught a manhole in the center of the street. He yelled at the cat, surprising it into a fleeting pause, and jumped away while it glared nervously at the converging packs. He jammed his pike into the edge of the recess, prying up the heavy cover. Grudgingly, it came; he heaved it aside and jumped into the blackness below, hand reaching out automatically for the rungs of the ladder that had to be there. He caught it, the wrench nearly breaking his wrist, and clung tightly; it was impossible to know how deep the hole went, or what might be below. An angry cascade of hoofbeats sounded above; the vicious beasts were all around, now fighting among themselves.

The ladder ended ten feet below the surface in a greasy platform. Sale braced his feet and looked around.

Glaring yellow eyes met his.

He froze against the ladder, waiting for his vision to adjust. He dared not make a motion, even in self-defense, until he knew what he faced.

In moments he had the answer. It was the tiger.

Somehow it had followed him down the hole, while he was too preoccupied to notice. His staff was above, even if there had been room to use it here. He would have to depend on his knife.

Yet he waited, hesitating to trigger the attack. He doubted that he was a match for it; it weighed, as nearly as he could ascertain, as much as or more than himself, and its vision in this locale would be superior. He would have to keep one hand on the ladder, for leverage, and fight with the other. He did not want to kill it if he could.

Minutes passed, and it did not attack. It watched him silently. As his eyes became fully acclimatized he saw that it was not hostile at all; it simply sat there, observing.

Of course! "You didn't come down here to attack me—you came to get away from the common enemy!" The cat made no motion; but Sale felt, perhaps illogically, that its lack of denial constituted assent. Any port in a storm; it had as much to fear from the implacable pigs as he had from the dogs. And, he was certain, either group above would gleefully destroy the refugees singly or in concert. Better to share a nest with a single enemy than face destruction by the pack. "Truce?" he inquired, and the tiger did not deny it.

Above, the tumult rose to a vicious level. Shadows hurtled by the hole; bits of fur fluttered down. Then a crash, and a heavy body dropped to land between the fugitives. It was a pig, its throat already torn open.

Sale realized that he was hungry. Moving carefully, and keeping one eye on the cat, he gripped the knife and approached the carcass. The tiger opened its jaws, but did not interfere. Sale hacked away, finally severing a leg; placing his foot on the remainder, he shoved it forcefully toward his companion. They ate.

It grew dark above, and quiet; but it would be foolhardy to attempt to leave now. They would have to spend the night where they were. Sale found that he could still see, vaguely; two feet to the side, his platform slid off into an open sewer, and phosphorescence coated the walls and lit the water. The air was close, but not fetid; they would get along.

Accepting the presence of the cat but never taking it for granted, Sale talked to keep himself awake. In the morning he might climb the ladder and emerge with impunity; but not yet.

"How did you get on the streets of Mid-Atlantic?" he asked the cat. "You're an Asian animal, Tiger. You don't mind if I call you Tiger? Good. And what about those pigs? Peccaries are South American, if I remember my Nature studies. Dogs and rats run wild; they're castoffs of one sort or another. But you—"

Tiger yawned and stretched out. "Don't do that!" Sale protested. "In another minute you'll have me doing it too; and while I don't mean to cast aspersions on your motives—"

Tiger ignored him, and Sale continued with some of his own history. "You see those blank buildings, Tiger; and you think the whole country has been deserted. But do you want to know something? The population of this subcontinent alone is over one billion. People, I mean; not tigers. They live in the buildings and they have a life of ease. They could go from one building to another if they wanted to, but they're simply not interested. You see, everything anybody needs or wants is delivered to his own apartment—anything. Nobody has to work. Even the few that do travel—robot repairmen, for example—use the tubes; nobody walks the streets. The buildings all have stairs and doors—building codes, you know; obsolete, but still in force—but practically all of them are sealed shut."

Tiger got up and faced the flowing water. "I wouldn't drink that if I were you," Sale cautioned. Then he saw it: the long angry snout of an alligator. It came close in the luminescence, gentle ripples hinting at its length: eight, nine feet of it. If the thing attacked—

The alligator heaved itself onto the narrow platform, heading directly for the tiger. Its jaws were huge. Sale moved over, put one boot against the exposed reptilian hide, and shoved; with a splash, it slid helplessly into the water. Acting on inspiration, Sale next kicked the sodden remnant of the pig into the sewer after it; the alligator flashed in the water, taking the morsel in its teeth, and disappeared.

Sale found himself standing beside the big cat. He retreated to his own side hurriedly. Why had he done it? A fight between Tiger and the alligator could only have been to his advantage; why should he interfere?

"It was only after food, just like the rest of us," he explained. "Some of the blood must have dripped into the water..." Tiger lay down again, seemingly unperturbed.

"And what am I doing here, fighting with rats, when I have a soft apartment at home, you'll be wanting to know," he said, resuming his previous train of thought. Tiger managed to look singularly uncurious. "It was because it was soft that I had to leave my apartment. Man isn't fitted for paradise; he grows flabby, loses self-respect. A man with any guts at all has to fight; he has to overcome. And so I chose adventure; I pried open the ground level door, and saw the savage world before me. I prepared myself; I set out to find the western end of Omega.

"Now I've found it—and I'm not satisfied. I want to know what's on the other side of that wall."

Finally Sale slept. He woke, half surprised to find himself unharmed, to a dim light spreading from the hole above. It was morning. He gripped the ladder and hoisted himself up. Cautiously he poked his head from the manhole. Dead dogs and pigs were everywhere; but that was all. Near the wall the rats were out in strength, gnawing on the remains.

"All clear!" Sale called down to Tiger, wondering whether the animal could get up the ladder. But the tawny body emerged easily.

Now that the mutual danger was over, he eyed the cat warily, not certain whether the truce still held.

He had recovered his staff and wiped it off, now holding it ready; but Tiger ignored it. A snarl to scatter the rats; then the cat was off, loping south along the wall.

South? Yet it had been going north to flee the pigs. Sale followed.

Two miles down, the cat disappeared. Sale followed warily, to discover a rent in the wall. A stone had fallen from it, and there was a hole leading to the other side. Peering through, he could see Tiger waiting.

He climbed through himself and stopped, amazed. The city ended with the wall; here there was only a forest wasteland; trees and brush and tall grass growing profusely. There was animal life here too, he knew; droppings littered the ground. Somewhere he could hear the sound of a river, and the air was sweet and cool.

How had this come to be? The last natural forests had died long ago, taken while the government was still debating protective legislation.

There was no Wilderness any more; not in all of North America. Yet here—

"The zoo!" Now it came to him. There was no wilderness; but there were parks, and artificial gardens for captive specimens. The tiger; the wild pigs: creatures of a zoo, now free and roaming in its neglect. And the shrubs, from all parts of the world, grown and spread. What had been an imitation of nature now was real.

Tiger brushed by him and scrambled back through the gap, into the city.

He stared after the great cat, confused.

"Surely this, for you, is paradise," he said after it. "Why do you want to leave?"

But as he said the words, he understood. Tigers were not made for paradise. Only in the gaunt streets, among inimical dogs and rats, was there real challenge for the creature of independent spirit.

He wondered whether Tiger also had a problem, foraging alone, finding places to sleep safely. No-man's-land could also be no-tiger's-land, at least at times. Individualism was a fine thing; but it could not deny the need for companionship.

Did Tiger also crave company in spirit?

Sale climbed out of the zoo and stood once more on the street. The cat was there, waiting.

"Come," he said, heading north. The tiger came.