Beasts John Crowley

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took the same joy in the sunrise, hunted and played and ate with the same
single-minded purpose, as they had when Painter had been with them; and their
grief, when they felt it, was limitless, with no admixture of hope or
expectation. She had explained to Meric: leos aren't like Painter, not most of
them. Painter has been wounded into consciousness, his life is -- a little bit
-- open to us, something shines through his being which is like what shines
through ours, but the females and the children are dark, You'll never learn
their story because they have no story. If you want to go among them, you have
to give up your own story: be dark like they are.
Caddie by now knew how to do that, to an extent, but Meric would never
learn it, and in any case it wasn't allowed to either of them then, because
with Painter gone they two must act as the bridge between the pride and the
human world it moved through and lived in, They had to spend Reynard's money
in the towns, they had to learn the safe border crossings, they had constantly
to _think_. Caddie forced herself to struggle against the wisdom of the
females, fight it with human cunning for their sakes, forced herself to
believe that only by keeping her head above the dark water could she help save
them, when all she wanted to do was give up the burden of cunning and sink
down amid their unknowing forever. No: only to Painter could she resign that
burden.
Then at one of the prearranged mail drops had come the summons from the
fox, Suspicious, anxious, unable to believe that Reynard could really know all
he pretended to know, she had nevertheless left Meric to shepherd the pride
and followed her instructions. It was all she could do.
She soon lost sight of the monument. The littered, shabby streets urged
her on, striking purposefully through the buildings but leading nowhere except
to further streets. Alarmed by acrid odors that had come to mean danger to
her, she began to see why Painter had smoked tobacco in towns. She walked
aimlessly among crowds that seemed bent on pressing business, hurrying people
with eyes intent, lugging heavy bags that perhaps they were carrying somewhere
or perhaps had stolen from somewhere they were eager to get away from. Caddie
thrust her hands into her pockets and walked on, unable to catch anyone's eye
or hold his attention long enough to ask a question.
At a convergence of streets, stores were lit up, and the sallow globes
of a few unbroken street lights were on. Lines of people stood patiently
waiting to be let in one at a time to buy -- what? Caddie wondered, In one
barred store window, televisions: ranks of them, all showing the same image
differently distorted, a man's head and shoulders, his mouth moving silently.
Then, in an instant, they all changed, to show a street like this one. A black
three-wheeled car. Two men in dark overcoats got out, looking wary and tired.
Between them a third, a tiny limping creature, in a hat whose brim hid him
from the camera, but whose manner revealed him to Caddie. She could almost
smell him.
She went to the door of the store. A burly black guard, armed, stood in
the doorway, looking bored. Caddie slipped past him, expecting to be seized,
but the guard seemed not to care.
". . . has not revealed the identity of its witness, though he is
believed to have been a high official in the Gregorius government. USE says
facts revealed in the hearings will shed dramatic new light on the
assassination of two years ago...." He spoke with such a clipped, false
intonation that she could barely understand him.
Someone stepped in front of her then; and another, coatless -- he must
work here, she thought -- came to stand next to her. "This ain't a the-ayter,"
he said.
"What?"
The person in front of her stepped away. On the screen was an image that
made her heart leap. Painter stood in front of his tent, his old shotgun in
his hands, He looked at her -- or at Meric, rather -- calm, puzzled, faintly
amused.
The store employee put his hand on Caddie's shoulder. "You ain't
buyin'," he said. "Go home and watch it."
She pulled away from him, desperate to hear. The guard at the door
glanced over, and proceeded toward her ponderously.
She heard the clipped, brisk voice say: "Government channels are
silent." And Painter was replaced by a smiling woman standing next to a
television, which showed the same woman and the same television, which showed
her again.
The monument she found at last stood at the end of an oblong pool, empty [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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