Destiny Doll

TWENTY-FIVE

The tree still lay where I had chopped it down with the raking laser beam, its jagged stump like a massive spear stabbing at the sky. The bole stretched for miles along the ground, its vegetation shriveled brown, revealing its woody skeleton.

Beyond it loomed the bulk of the red-stone edifice in which the tree had penned us with its bombardment, and looking at, it, I could hear again, in memory and imagination, the sound of millions of invisible wings flying underneath its roof, beating their way out of nowhere into nowhere.

A foul and bitter stench blew from the free and as we approached it I could see that the circular, lawnlike area which had surrounded the stump had caved in upon itself and become a pit. Out of the pit rose the stench and from the knoll on which we stood I caught a glimpse of slimy skeletons- strangely wrought but undeniably skeletons-floating in the oily liquid that half filled the pit.

Not just one life, I told myself, not the life of the free alone, but an entire community of life-the little, crying, mewling creatures that had swarmed out to cry their denunciations of us and now this, another community of life which had existed in a fluid reservoir underneath the tree. Life that in some way was intimately bound up with the free, that could no longer live once the tree was dead, that may have lived only so that the tree might live. I looked for some evidence of the mewling creatures which, by now, must be dead as well. There was no sign of them. Had they in death, I wondered, dried up into almost weightless nothingness, and been scattered by the wind.

I had been the one, I thought. It had been my hand that had loosed the death. I had intended to kill the tree alone; I had killed much else besides. I wondered what had come over me that I should be thinking this. They’d had it coming, hadn’t they? The tree had attacked us and I had had every moral reason and every legal right to fight back. That much at least was gospel, a personal and very intimate gospel built up through the years. Nothing acted tough toward me that I didn’t act tough right back. And it worked, I told myself grimly. Throughout our long trek to the mountains and the long trek back, no tree had made a pass at us. The word somehow had been passed along: Leave this guy alone; he’s pure poison if you mess around with him. Not knowing I no longer had a laser gun, apparently not wanting to take the chance of finding out.

I felt Roscoe pawing at my shoulder and turned to see what it was he wanted. He pointed back the way we’d come.

And there they were, a herd of them. There was no mistaking them. They were, in flesh, the kind of monstrous beasts that had left their skeletons piled in a windrow back in the gorge where we had rescued Paint. They were massive things, running on great hind legs, with tails thrust out behind them to balance the great bulk of their bodies and their gigantic heads. With poised front legs armed with sharp and gleaming talons. The heads grinned at us and even from that distance there was evil in the faces. They might have been following us for a long time, but this was the first time they had shown themselves.

They were big and ugly and they were coming fast. I had seen what they could do and I wasn’t about to wait and let them get to work on me. I lit out of there, heading for the trail that led toward the city. The shield weighed me down and I threw it away. The scabbarded sword banged against my knees and I tried to get the belt unbuckled, and while I was doing this the sword tripped me and I went sprawling like a cartwheel. Just before I came out of my spin and was falling flat upon my face, a hand reached out and grabbed me by the sword belt and held me high enough so that I cleared the ground, just barely. I hung there, swaying back and forth and watched the ground jerk by underneath my nose and out of one corner of my eyes I saw Roscoe’s feet moving like a blur.

My God, how he could run.

I tried to angle my head around to see where we might be, but I was so near the ground I couldn’t see a thing. It wasn’t comfortable and it was embarrassing, but I wasn’t beefing any. Roscoe was covering the ground in a satisfactory manner, much faster than if he’d had to wait for me.

Then finally I saw pavement underneath my face and Roscoe jerked me up and set me on my feet. I was a little dizzy and inclined to stagger, but I saw we were in the narrow city street we’d traveled days before, with the straight white walls arrowing up into the sky above us.

Angry snarling and vicious trumpeting sounded behind me and when I spun around I saw the pursuing beasts throwing their bodies into the narrow cleft of street, throwing them ferociously and vainly, fighting to get at us, fighting to get in. But we were safe. Finally I had an answer as to why the streets should be so narrow.