Empyrion II: The Siege of Dome (14 page)

Pizzle sank lower in his chair as his heart sank lower into melancholy. He cursed his blind foolishness and wallowed in wave after wave of self-pity that rolled over him. By the meal's third course, he was so deep in his despair that he became frantic and began talking loudly and volubly to those around him. His two dinner companions exchanged looks of bewilderment. What had gotten into this foreigner? Silent as a stone through the first half of the meal, he was now boisterous to the point of hysterics.

Pizzle did not see the looks exchanged around the table. He did not see the stricken expression on Starla's face as he proceeded to make a monumental ass of himself, capping his performance by spilling his glass into the lap of the guest next to him. Jaire attempted intervention, trying her best to calm him, but to no avail.

Finally Pizzle, fearing some greater humiliation, excused himself and walked out into the canopied courtyard. The sun-shield was drawn back, and the stars looked down in icy disapproval of his behavior at the table. Pizzle sighed morosely and shuffled over to a seat, slumped down, and closed his eyes in misery.

Some time later, an hour perhaps, he became aware of a perfumed presence. He opened his eyes and, with his slightly fuzzy vision, saw a dream drifting toward him. Starla came to stand before him, a look of hurt and disappointment on her lovely face. Pizzle needed no explanation to know what she was feeling, for her expression fairly well mirrored his own. But
why
she should feel this way he couldn't figure.

“May I sit down?” she asked.

“It's a free country,” sniffed Pizzle. She gave him a questioning glance. “It's an expression—it means go ahead, nobody's going to stop you.”

“You wish someone would stop me from sitting with you?”

“No, I didn't mean that. I meant—look, just do what you want, okay?”

Starla sat down in a woven chair across from him, crisp in her blue chinti. She looked at him with her large, dark eyes, liquid in the starlight. “I thought you'd be glad to see me,” she said softly. “I thought we were friends.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too,” grumped Pizzle. “And I
was
glad to see you—until I saw you were with someone else.”

“I brought Vanon to meet you.”

“Great. I love meeting a girl's boyfriends.”

“I do not understand you, Pizzy. Explain yourself please.”

She was asking for it, was she? Very well, he'd give her both barrels. “I'll explain myself. I was hoping to see you tonight—I waited and waited for you to show up, and when you finally do it's on the arm of some bozo you say you want to introduce me to. Why? You want my blessing or what? I'm sure you'll both be very happy together. How's that? Now why don't you run back inside before he comes out here looking for you. One thing I don't need is to see you leave with him.”

A shocked expression replaced the hurt look on Starla's face. “What's the matter?” asked Pizzle. “Didn't anybody ever talk like that to you before?”

Mute, Starla shook her head.

“Too bad,” snarled Pizzle. “People talk like that to me all the time. You get used to it.”

“I came looking for you—” she began.

“So you could rub it in? Don't bother.”

“I wanted ... to be with you.” Her voice quavered as she stood to leave.

Now Pizzle felt like a prize jerk. Why couldn't he just leave well enough alone? Why did he always have to push a thing too far? Because I'm a pin-headed stupido, he thought, kicking himself. “Look, you're not going to cry or anything, are you?” he said weakly.

Starla shook her head again and looked away momentarily. Pizzle thought he saw the glint of a tear on her lashes. “You're angry with me,” Starla observed. “But I don't know why.”

“I'm not angry with you. I mean, I
was,
but not now. Sit back down a minute.”

Starla sat stiffly, folding her hands in her lap, glanced up at him, and said, “Vanon is my brother. He's my only family.”

Pizzle groaned and slid down in his chair. “Somebody shoot me.”

“If my bringing him here to meet you was wrong, I am sorry. I did not wish to hurt you.”

It was, Pizzle reflected, probably genetically impossible for a Fieri to willfully hurt another human being. What a blundering, self-centered, gravel-headed dizzard I've been! What a toad! “I—It's just—I can't—” He stumbled over the words. “I'm sorry, Starla, I thought ... I don't know what I thought.”

“You thought I didn't want to be with you tonight?”

“Yeah, that's what I thought all right,” Pizzle admitted. “I've got mashed potatoes for brains sometimes. I'm sorry. I should have trusted you.” He swallowed hard. “You'll forgive me?”

“I forgive you, Asquith,” she said.

He leaned closer to her and caught her scent in the warm night air. “Back on Earth there's a custom,” he said softly, his heart pounding, “that when lovers quarrel and make up, they kiss.”

She gazed steadily back at him and replied, “We have the same custom.”

The next thing Pizzle knew, Starla was in his arms and he was kissing her, his heart bumping so loudly in his chest he thought he was having a heart attack, but didn't mind in the least.

“I love you, Starla,” he said when he came up for air, astonishing himself with his declaration. He'd scarcely admitted it to himself. What am I doing? he wondered. Why can't I control myself?

Starla drew away from him, looked at him calmly, and said, “I love you, too, Asquith. I have from the first night when you told me all about
The Hobbit.”

“You did?” Pizzle stared. This is terrible! What am I going to do now? She's in love with me! I've really done it this time. “You really did?”

She nodded and reached for his hand, took it, and held it. Pizzle entered the seventh dimension—a place where time stood still and flashed by at incredible speed simultaneously. His head swam, and his feet perspired. His throat tightened, and his eyes spun in his head.

“I ... Starla, I've hardly ever—that is, never—loved anyone before.” His tongue grew thick and unwieldy in his mouth. “Not really.”

She looked at him strangely. “Was there never a woman for you?”

“Oh, sure, lots of women—but none of them would ever have anything to do with me. I am, I guess you might say, just not what every woman looks for first in a man. Let's face it, I'm no holovision star.”

Starla puzzled over his words. “I still do not understand many of the things you say. But I see into your heart, and I know you are a gentle spirit.”

Pizzle could only stare. No one had ever said anything like that to him before, and he didn't know how to respond. He simply sat holding her hand very tightly. A few minutes passed this way before either one spoke. Finally Pizzle broke the silence by saying, “Well, what do we do now—get married?”

The words were out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying. To her credit Starla did not leap up and run screaming into the night. She sat beside him, gazing at him intently, the starlight shimmering in her hair. She acted as if what he had said had some basis in logical possibility, as if she were actually considering it.

“I must introduce you to my brother first. Among Fieri, marriage is not entered lightly,” was all she said.

“Oh, right. But maybe I shouldn't—I mean, what I said just now ... well, that was ... Sure, let's go meet your brother.” Pizzle stood abruptly, before any more ludicrous words could cross his lips, and together they went back inside to rejoin Jaire's dinner party.

The rest of the evening went pinwheeling by in a blur. Pizzle, reeling from the implications of his hasty suggestion, wandered dazed through the introduction to Vanon, Starla's brother. At some point the party was over. The guests departed, Starla disappeared, and he found himself standing before the open end of his room, staring unseeing out upon Prindahl's calm, starlit face.

Eventually he found his bed and lay down in it, not to sleep, but to toss restlessly as his mind wrestled with the idea of marriage ... MARRIAGE!

Now, as he lay contemplating his probable fate, Pizzle had regained most of his wits and composure. As dawn's pearly light streamed into his room, he remembered more clearly what had transpired last night in the courtyard. Starla had not said they
would
get married, only that marriage was not entered into lightly.

Feeling like a prisoner granted a surprise reprieve, Pizzle rose, ready to face the day. With any luck at all Starla would not even recall their conversation.

The tree Crocker found
was perfect: about six centimeters in diameter and arrow straight. Although merely a sapling, its trunk was tall and strong, its wood dense. Using his small utility knife, he trimmed off the few inconsequential upper branches and then proceeded to cut off the trunk near the roots, patiently shaving away the wood layer by layer in a tapering cone shape. It took him many long hours, but when he finished, he had a sturdy javelin as tall as he was.

He spent the next hours sharpening his weapon, whittling the cone into an elongated pyramid shape—four lethal triangles for strength. Once finished he began practicing with it, studying its balance and attitude of flight. It took much shaving of the shaft to get it properly balanced, but as he worked and practiced he discovered he could throw his spear nearly thirty meters with accuracy.

He had not heard or seen any traces of the behemoth lords since the titanic struggle overheard several days ago. The thought that such creatures existed and moved through the forest both frightened and thrilled Crocker. Whenever he happened to recall the terrible clash a twitch in his gut, a physical memory of fear, reminded him of the exquisite thrill he'd experienced in those dreadful moments when he believed the creatures would discover him.

Crocker spent the next several days ranging the forest for small game, traipsing only as far as he could go and still return to his secluded bower by nightfall. He still slept by the little pool and swam there. He had eaten on the carcass of the plump animal he'd killed until the meat had begun to rot. But that had been days ago, and no more animals had visited his pool to drink. He was hungry again, and anxious to try his weapon in earnest.

The Blue Forest abounded in wildlife of all kinds—most of it, unfortunately, inhabiting the upper regions of the leaf canopy, well above the reach of his spear. Birds and small mammalian creatures watched him pass along the forest pathways far below. But there were larger, less wary animals to be found as well. He saw their spoor and occasionally caught a glimpse of a sleek hide gliding into the brush just ahead.

As hunger became more acute, his stealth improved in direct proportion. By the third day, he crept through the verdant byways as silently as the creatures he stalked. Although much of his human awareness was gone, Crocker still possessed a superior animal cunning. And if he neither knew nor remembered anything of his former life, at least certain latent portions of his mentality were responding vigorously to the stimulus of life in the forest. In place of memory, for example, he was developing an extraordinary patience and perseverance, allowing him to sit unmoving in a single spot or slog along a promising path for hours on end without complaint or exhaustion.

Of these things he was ignorant, however, for not a speck of consciousness remained. His life was governed by the most basic of forces: day and night, hunger and thirst.

He wandered the Blue Forest unaware of who he was or where he had come from, simply reacting to his needs of the moment, thinking no further ahead than the next meal. The robo-carrier did not accompany him on these forays, for the soft whirr of its motors and the shush of its treads as it passed through the brush made too much noise. Crocker had carved a tunnel for it to enter his secluded bower: once there, he switched the machine off.

Crouching atop a moss-covered rock overhang from which he could survey the trail below, he sat with his javelin resting loosely in his hands, waiting for an animal to pass beneath him. Several hours had gone by, and he was just about to give up his vigil and move on when he heard a rustling of dry leaves. He had placed a fallen vine across the path a little way up the trail. Something was coming!

Instantly alert, Crocker's grasp on the spear tightened. His muscles tensed. He leaned forward, rising on the balls of his feet. The rustling persisted. Not one animal only, but many.

Just then the first creature appeared on the trail below. It was smaller than he'd hoped, with stringy red-brown hair over a barrel-shaped body supported by four spindly legs that looked too delicate to support it. Its narrow head sported a longish, semi-flexible snout which waved in all directions, searching the becalmed air of the forest for scent traces. Crocker, keen to kill, would have let fly with his spear, but some recently awakened instinct stayed in his hand.
Wait!
this newfound voice cautioned.
Larger prey is coming. Wait.

He paused, and shortly the first animal moved on, snuffling at the ground with its floppy proboscis. Immediately behind it came another, slightly larger version of the same animal. Crocker raised the spear once more.

No,
came the voice again.
Be patient. This is not the one. You will know it when you see it.

Crocker obeyed the instruction, lowering the weapon slightly, biding his time. Two more creatures scuttled by on the trail below—neither one acceptable. He waited and was about to give chase when he heard again the rustling of the vine. This time the animal that passed beneath his gaze was slower and much more stout—its belly nearly dragged the path as it walked along, snout writhing, sampling the leaves of all the plants it passed.

Now!
cried the voice in his head.
Strike now and you will eat well tonight!

Crocker's reaction was instantaneous. He felt a tension in his arm as he drew back the spear and sighted down its length. Teeth clenched, he heaved the shaft forward with a rolling motion of his shoulder.

The spear flashed through the air. A frightened squeal shattered the stillness. The animal dodged. It tried to run, but its body would not move—the beast was pierced through its thick neck and pinioned to the earth.