Jungle Of Steel And Stone

Chapter Fourteen

Veil dreams.

He assumed he would be Toby, but he unexpectedly finds himself in the mind, looking through the eyes, of a sixteen-year-old boy. He is wondering if his mother might not be right. What if Toby is the Black Messiah? And what if Toby does take a special interest in him? Usually this thought makes the boy uneasy, but at other times it makes him feel good.

Sometimes, when the boy feels depressed or confused, he tentatively tries speaking to Toby's spirit, asking for the African's help or advice. The boy has often thought about the weeks Toby spent in Central Park and the pain He must have suffered from the bullet wound in His arm.

As a result of his thoughts, the boy has found that he no longer even wants to risk hurting people; he has turned from mugging as a chief source of income to robbing stores, stealing various items and selling them to a fence who lives in his neighborhood.

However, even robbing stores has begun to bother him. The boy has been having nightmares as a result of his worry that Toby might be watching him, judging him— perhaps waiting to kill him, as He killed the two muggers, if the boy does not stop stealing altogether.

The boy's problem is that he does not know any other way to obtain the money he is used to having in his pockets. Now he is broke; he needs money and has decided that he has no choice but to get it the fastest and easiest way he knows—mugging subway riders in Manhattan.

He'd boarded the subway bound for Manhattan but had almost immediately suffered from a shortness of breath and a fluttering heartbeat. He does not want to threaten anyone with a knife; he does not want to put himself into a situation where he might have to hurt—or even kill— someone.

His mother could be right. Toby could be watching him.

He gets off the subway while still in Queens, at a stop on a street running parallel to Mount Olive Cemetery. The boy walks nervously to the north end of the cemetery, then stops when he comes to an intersection where all the streetlights have been shot out by children with air rifles. The intersection is dark, and the store on the corner closest to him is a camera shop. The boy glances quickly around him. Seeing that the street and sidewalks are empty, he walks quickly to the store.

There is an old steel gate drawn across the entrance to the shop and an adjacent display window. The boy knows it will be a simple matter for him to break the window with a rock or his elbow, reach through two broken slats in the gate, and grab two or three of the cameras on display. The fence might give him as much as twenty dollars per camera. It isn't much, the boy thinks, but at least he won't be broke.

The boy searches at the curb until he finds a piece of broken pavement. He walks back to the window, raises the chunk of cement—and stiffens. He slowly lowers his hand as he feels his body break into a sweat.

This is ridiculous, the boy thinks. He has done this sort of thing countless times in the past and has never been caught. Yet he's never been so nervous. What terrifies him is the thought that a Black Messiah might be around—a Black Messiah Who kills thieves.

To reassure himself that he is not being watched by anyone, much less Toby, the boy walks to the corner and again looks around. The block across the intersection is completely dark, and the boy marks that street as his escape route. To his left, halfway down the block, is a garishly lit bar, but there is no one standing outside on the sidewalk. All of the buildings on the block to his right have been razed to make room for a high rise; the steel skeleton of the building soars from behind a plywood fence into the night sky. He is alone, the boy thinks, absolutely alone.

He walks back to the camera shop, takes a deep breath, then smashes the stone through the window. A shrill alarm bell sounds, but the boy has expected that, and he does not panic. He reaches through the gate, through the broken pane of glass, grabs two Polaroids and a Nikon, then sprints across the intersection toward the night-black street beyond. He leaps up on the sidewalk, sprints twenty yards, then tries to stop with a suddenness that causes him to turn his ankle, stumble, and fall. He hurls the cameras away from him, scrambles to his feet, and stumbles backward until he bumps hard and painfully against the brick facade of the building behind him. His heart pounds wildly inside his chest, and his mouth has gone absolutely dry. He badly wants to scream, to howl his regret and sorrow at the sky, but no sound will come out of his throat. In this terror-filled moment the boy knows beyond any doubt that he is going to die.

Toby stands in the darkness no more than ten feet away from the spot where the boy cowers.

The figure is cloaked in darkness, but there is no doubt in the boy's mind that it is Toby. Toby is naked, slumped against a shop door, breathing hoarsely. Toby holds a ragged bundle in His arms, and from the cloth protrudes the head of a wooden statue.

His mother was right, the boy thinks. The Black Messiah has been watching him; Toby has seen, and now He will kill.

The boy's mouth opens and shuts a few times before he finally finds his voice. "Sheeeit!" he screams.

The sound of his own yell galvanizes the boy's muscles. Oblivious to the pain in his twisted ankle, he pushes off the brick wall and dashes out into the street, expecting at any moment to feel a spear tearing into his back, ripping through his heart and lungs.

He makes it down the street to the bar and goes crashing through the door. He runs into a table, spins around, and sprawls on the floor.

"Hey, kid—!"

"He's gonna kill me, man!" The boy sobs, squirming in pain on the floor and clawing at his twisted ankle. "He's gonna kill me!"

A big man with anchor tattoos on both hairy forearms laughs as he slides off his bar stool. He reaches down and hauls the boy to his feet by the shirt collar. "Who's gonna kill you, kid?"

The boy swallows hard, wipes tears from his eyes, and points a trembling finger in the direction of the street. "Toby," he croaks. "The Black Messiah."

The big man's eyes narrow as he shakes the boy. "You've seen the African?"

"Out there, man!" the boy says, his head bobbing up and down. "He's right down the street!"

Suddenly the bar is filled with excited shouts, the grating sounds of chairs scraping on the hardwood floor, then the ominous clanking of steel. The boy stares wide-eyed as men rush past him, over him, pushing at each other as they pour out the door. Most of the men carry weapons of some sort, and only now does the boy realize that the bar was filled with a vigilante group on the hunt for Toby. In a few moments he is alone; everyone, including the bartender, has rushed out into the street.

The boy gets to his feet and limps out of the bar in time to see a naked black figure carrying a bundle dart through a gap in the fence surrounding the half-finished building in the next block. The vigilantes have seen Him and are shouting excitedly, waving their weapons in the air, as they run through the intersection.

By the time the boy reaches the construction site, a dozen men are clustered around the gap in the fence where Toby had disappeared. There is a great deal of shouting and confusion. One man, armed with a hunting rifle, steps through the gap into the darkness beyond, but he reappears after only a minute or two.

"It's dark as shit in there," the man says. "I ain't takin' no chance on gettin' a spear stuck up my ass."

The men back up into the middle of the street. One of the men grunts as he points to an area high up on the steel skeleton. He raises his rifle to his shoulder and squeezes off a shot. Another man shouts that he has seen Toby. More shots are fired. Bullets ricochet off the forest of steel girders, and a few of the men duck and run for cover from their own bullets.

Veil rolls away from the dream, but he does not awaken, and he does not enter into deep sleep. Instead he searches for Toby until he finds him and becomes him.

Veil is Toby.

He cannot remember ever feeling so tired or sick. The Nal-toon has set him a very great trial, he thinks, one which is perhaps greater than any K'ung warrior has been asked to endure. He prays that he will have the strength to continue.

But then he reminds himself that if the trial is great, so are the Nal-toon's gifts; food, sweet water, sanctuary in the Newyorkcities' jungles of the dead, and—most wondrous treasure of all—the Nal-toon's blood-shilluk. He must have courage.

He lies in a shallow trench he dug at the bottom of a shallow basin, near a stream, in a copse of trees surrounded by brush-covered knolls. He knows that it is not good cover, but he has simply been too exhausted and sick to search for better. He has to rest.

A short time before, he took an unusually large dose of the blood-shilluk, but it does not seem to be having the usual rapid effect; his bowels churn and he is still in great pain. Indeed he has found that he must continue to take increasingly larger doses of the God-medicine in order to function at all.

He wishes he could think clearly, for the behavior of some of the Newyorkcities is increasingly confusing to him. It is difficult for him to imagine any tribe that would not be totally united in their desire to possess the Nal-toon, Who is all.

Yet . . .

There was the young Newyorkcity warrior who had surprised him in the dark street. The warrior could have attacked him but had run away.

And there was Reyna, and the man-in-night.

Veil is now considering the possibility that it had been Reyna in the last jungle of the dead, not a spirit, and that she was trying to find him in order to give him aid. Perhaps Reyna and the man-in-night have been trying to help him all along. Obviously, Veil thinks, they seem to know where he is going, yet have not told any other Newyorkcities.

He remembers vividly how the Newyorkcities running after him in the street had strengthened his muscles and cleared his mind, enabling him to run and hide in the open building.

The problem had been that the building was a trap, not sanctuary, and when the huge warrior with the hand-light and big bang-stick had entered, Veil had assumed that this was the Newyorkcities' champion, their greatest warrior, sent to duel with him in a battle of honor. In his weakened condition, Veil had known that he had no real chance against this land's most powerful warrior, but he had resolved to fight with courage and die with honor.

From the moment the warrior had entered the building, Veil had stalked him from a higher level—and it had come as a shock to Veil to see how poorly the huge man tracked in the darkness; even with his powerful hand-light, his healthy body and two good eyes, it had seemed to Veil that the man could not see or move. With growing excitement at the thought that the Nal-toon might purposely be weakening this champion, Veil had continued to stalk the man, squinting his good eye in order to focus his vision. He'd known that he would have to be very cautious, for even a good hit with a poisoned arrow would not prevent the man from using his deadly bang-stick.

Then, to Veil's amazement, the man-in-night and Reyna had come into the building. And the Newyorkcity champion had tried to kill them. Reyna and the man-in-night who traveled with her were willing to risk their lives for him, Veil had thought.

Perhaps. If it was not a trick to put him off-guard.

Veil had stalked the warrior as the warrior stalked Reyna and the man-in-night. He had ignored Reyna's pleas for him to run, for there had been the possibility that she was trying to force him out into the open, where other Newyorkcities would be waiting for him.

On the other hand, if it was not a trick, Veil would not abandon the two people who were risking their lives for him. That was not the way of the warrior. If Reyna and the man-in-night were his allies, then he would fight to help them—and he would trust the Nal-toon to see into his heart and watch over a K'ung warrior who was doing what he thought he must.

Then the warrior had started down after Reyna and the man-in-night, and Veil had attacked—first with his throwing stick, and then with a poisoned arrow that had found its mark. Reyna and the man-in-night had escaped.

Veil had watched with some amusement as the big warrior had continued to stumble around in the dark, looking for him. Veil had not been able to understand how a man who was facing death would waste a single heartbeat pursuing another warrior he obviously could not find.

He had waited patiently until he'd been absolutely certain that all the Newyorkcities were gone before he'd left the building. By then the excitement and activity had begun to take their toll; his stomach had begun to cramp severely, his legs wobbled under him, and he could barely see.

He'd been halfway down the street before he'd realized that he was being followed. A chill had gone through him, for in the time that his senses had deserted him, his pursuer could easily have killed him, especially if the Newyorkcity had a bang-stick.

Breathing a prayer of thanks to the Nal-toon for making him aware of his pursuer, Veil had hobbled as fast as he could down the street, then cried inwardly with joy when he had seen a gap in the stone wall to his right, which led into a jungle. He'd darted into the jungle, then ducked behind a tree and waited.

Veil had been surprised to find that his pursuer was the same young warrior who had confronted, then run away from him earlier. The boy had no weapons, and so Veil had merely put the tip of an arrow against the boy's throat.

"Holy shit!"

"Go away. I do not want to kill you. Just go away."

Although his entire body trembled with terror, the young warrior had stood his ground.

"Man, I can't understand a word you're saying, but I can see that you're hurt. I want to help you, and I promise I won't tell anyone where you are. Come home with me. My mom thinks you're like Jesus, and maybe I do too. She'll fix you up, and then you'll have a good place to hide."

"Go!" Veil had commanded, removing the arrow tip from the boy's throat and pointing toward the street. And the boy had run away.

Perhaps he should have killed the boy, Veil thinks—but the boy had not killed him when he'd had the chance. Veil finds everything confusing; life is clean and simple in the desert, and it is usually easy to tell friends from enemies. Not in Newyorkcity, this is a place that clouds a warrior's mind and drains his will.

He sniffs a large amount of the Nal-toon's blood-shilluk. Then, impatient with the increasing slowness of the effect, he sniffs still more. Finally, his head spinning, Veil passes out.

Night-chill awakens Veil-in-Toby. He lies still, listening, trying to probe the darkness with his hunter-warrior's senses in order to evaluate the surrounding area. When he is satisfied that there is no one near, he pushes aside the brush that covers him and sits up. The pain that shoots through his skull almost makes him keel over, and he quickly sniffs some blood-shilluk. It takes a long time for the blood-shilluk to take effect, but Veil waits, unwilling to risk passing out if he takes more. He must move on.

It occurs to him that he should eat, although he has not been hungry for a long time. He has no food but resolves to find the strength to hunt at the earliest opportunity. He drinks at a nearby stream, then moves on to the southeast.

A full moon lights the open ground. Under other circumstances he might not travel so quickly after the incident in the open building, but he feels that the Nal-toon now wants him to hurry. No matter how much he rests, Veil thinks, he seems to grow progressively weaker. He must get to the airplane fields soon. He is terribly lonely and he wants to go home.

He moves through the trees around the perimeter of a meadow. As he approaches the far end Veil stops and gazes suspiciously at an area where the meadow narrows. The whole jungle is growing smaller, he thinks, narrowing. Although he has been walking in a straight line through trees, he now finds that there is a stone wall close to his right, and beyond that a street. He is in danger.

His head pulses with pain, but he resists the impulse to take more blood-shilluk; while the God-medicine at one time cleared his senses and eased his pain, it now tends to confuse and disorient him even further. He is no longer sure of the proper amount to take, and so he decides to try to take none—at least not while he is traveling.

Veil slumps down, braces his back against a tree, and checks his weapons. He has lost his throwing stick, but he still has his bow, six poisoned arrows, and a hastily constructed spear with a sharp stone head, lashed to the shaft with vines. He considers these adequate replacements for the spear and knife lost in the place of the rolling wooden objects.

He is so very, very tired, Veil thinks—yet he must make a decision. He does not wish to go out into the lighted street while there is still cover, but the narrowing of the jungle before him makes him nervous; it is an area where man-snares could be set, or where Newyorkcities could be waiting to ambush him.

To go out into the street where he can be seen, Veil thinks, or go on into the narrow jungle where he can be trapped?

He knows he must make the decision, and it looms as an unbearable, momentous hurdle. Suddenly he begins to weep.

"Great Nal-toon, please help me," Veil whispers, ashamed of his sobbing but unable any longer to control his depthless sorrow and loneliness. "My will is leaving me, and I do not think I can go on without strength, which You must give me. When will I be judged to have passed Your trial, great Nal-toon? Please have mercy on and forgive me, Nal-toon, for this warrior is finished."