Gateways (45 page)

Those dogs are worse than lions, and don’t you forget it. If a lion decides to go for you, she’ll come right at you. But—

Well, I said
she
because it’s nearly always the girl lions that do it. Like that one I was telling you about that me and my Lion Friends hunted. We found her, too, and some younger females with her, and cubs, and one big black-maned male. He just stared at us, but I knew what he was saying. I always do, nearly, with lions. He said,
I don’t want any trouble, but if you start some I’ll finish it.
So I told him we didn’t want any either, but one of his girls had killed three of us, and that was the trouble. The other guys, my Lion Friends, looked at me like I was crazy. But I knew the big male had understood me. He had blinked, and I know what that means when a lion does it.

The females were snarling a little, and those that had cubs were trying to get them out of way. I went up to the one we were hunting then and told her she had to stop killing us or we’d have to kill her. I said I knew it made her feel young again. I understood that, but it had to stop just the same. So what was it? Stop killing us or die today?

She stared at me, and then she nodded and turned away. That meant it was over. I relaxed, and so did the lions. My friends had their spears and shields up, though. I had to tell them it was over and we could relax and go home. After a while one said I had talked to the lioness only she hadn’t never talked to me. I said yes she did, she promised to stop killing people. That shut them up for a while, then one said how do we know she’ll keep her promise? And I explained that she was bound to keep it, she was a lion. And she did, too.

Fine, let’s get back to that. I wasn’t trying to get out, just trying to find something to eat. You know about the deer and goats, and the striped ones that are sort of like horses, and they’re all good to eat. Only I didn’t see any then, and I don’t think I could have gotten one if I had.

What happened was that the hills got bigger, and there were cliffs, and after I’d walked a long, long way, I came to the end, the place where the river started. It ran out of a cliff there, and if you looked careful you could see a door beside it, a great big door big enough for a spider. It was painted to look like rock, and a good job too. Only it wasn’t really rock, it was
metal, and the spider that had gone through it last hadn’t closed it all the way. There was a little crack, like, that I could squeeze through.

So I did, and when I had I was in a tunnel, like underground, only it was in the boat. I knew there’d be spiders and they’d get me if they could, so I went fast until it opened out, and when it opened out it was a food place with the boxes and things hung up where you couldn’t get at them. You know how they do. It smelled good in there, so I cut open a few boxes. I think it was three, but it was a long time ago and I can’t be sure. Could have been four or even five. Finally I found one that had food in it, the kind we call “meal” because we pretty often make a meal of it.

I was hungry and ate a lot, and then I was thirsty. I thought I’d run back along that tunnel and go out into the grass country and drink from the river. Only that time I noticed something I had been too scared to see before. You could turn off into a place where a lot of noise was, and see the river getting born right there. Big pipes, you know, and water running out of them and all running together until all the water ran out through a hole that I knew had to go out into the grass country. So I could get a drink right there and I did.

I slept and ate some more, and it took me a long time to find my way out of the boat, but I did that, too. And when I did, I went back inside and got some really good food to take with me.

Why? Well, honey, you’d know if you’d just think about it. I was all alone in there, but I had friends back in the city. You’re always a lot safer if there’s people around you that know you. I had some friends, and there was this girl, and I figured I’d bring them all in. So back I went, with the food wrapped up in a kind of paper the spiders have that you can eat.

Everybody was gone. Irene, Edwards, all of them. I looked and looked and about got myself killed, only I never did find them—or find out what had happened to them, either. Then I found another girl, really young and about starved. I was hungry again myself by then, so I said, hey look at all this good stuff I got here. You give me what I want and I’ll give you as much of this as you can eat. Naturally she said I had to give her some food first, and that was when I surprised her. I said, sure, sit down. Here it is, only I get some, too.

So she did and ate until I thought she’d bust, and didn’t stop until everything was gone. Only I’d been eating, too, and I was bigger. I didn’t eat as much as she did, but I ate one hell of a lot. There’s nothing like sharing with somebody who’s about starved to make you eat everything in sight.

So then she lay down and everything, and that decided me. I had about decided already, but that nailed it down. I said, you stand up and come
with me. I said you had to give me what I wanted, and what I want is for you to come along with me to a place I’m going to show you where you won’t ever be hungry again. That last wasn’t quite true, we’ve been hungry a time or three, only I thought it was true when I said it so I wasn’t lying.

Sure, I took her back to the spider boat, and brought her in with me. I showed her some food, and told her she could stick with me or split. I couldn’t watch her all the time and I wasn’t going to try. If she split, that was okay, I’d said she could. Only I knew my way around, she’d seen that a couple times on the way to the boat, and even if she did (because she’d said she did, too) a friend with a knife never hurts.

She said she’d stick, so then I said, “Fine. I’m all for that. Now if we stay here where the food is, pretty soon a spider is going to come along and see we’ve been eating it and start looking for us. Moving the big boxes and the round things and all this stuff. Maybe he doesn’t find us the first time, okay? But the next time he might bring somebody to help. We’d have to get out, or we’re meat. So what I say is, I’m going where the water is. I know where there’s plenty of water, good clean cool water that’s good for drinking and swimming, too. I don’t think they come there a lot, and there’s no way they could tell we were drinking their water because it’s running downhill anyhow. So that’s where I’m going. If you’re really going to stick, just come along.”

She did, so I took her out to the grass country, down the river just far enough that we were out of sight of the door. Spiders walk quiet, but I had the notion that the door opening was bound to make a noise, and shutting a lot more. I wanted to be close enough to hear them both, but not so close that a spider would see us as soon as it stuck its eyes out. They’ve got eight eyes. I know you’ve never been close enough to count them, but I have. It’s eight, just like the legs, only some little and some big.

Maybe you saw this one coming, but I didn’t. Somebody closed that door. We’d found a hole in the rocks that made us pretty safe. If anything wanted to get at us, there was only one way it could. We’d collect dry stuff, dead grass and bushes, and make a fire at the opening. Not a big one, a little one that didn’t smoke. It gave us light to see anything trying to get in, and it was something anything that tried to get in had to dodge to do it.

So we were pretty safe in there, only we didn’t have a lot of food. We’d got some while the door was still open and piled it in back. That was good, but it didn’t last. We tried to find something else, and did sometimes, but what we needed was another way to get back to where the meal was and the rest of it. We looked and looked, but we didn’t have any luck with it.
Getting in where the water came out would have been great, but it goes too fast.

Finally I told her there had been other people on the grass, lower down where things flattened out. They had come in the way the elephants did, and it was how I’d come in, too. Maybe that was still open, or maybe they’d found another way out. So the thing for us to do was find them, stay out of sight, and see what they were doing.

She said no. She’d stay right where she was, and I could go scouting like I said. There were long-legged bugs you could eat if you picked the legs off first and toasted the rest in the fire, and she’d catch them and eat them and maybe find something else.

We argued about it for a couple of days, but pretty soon I saw it was no go. If I made her come when she didn’t want to, she’d give us away sure. Or else she’d split when my back was turned. Either one would be a lot worse than leaving her behind, so I said okay.

Then she surprised me again. She made me promise that if something got her or she starved, I’d bury anything that was left and not eat it. I said have you got a sickness or something? She said no, she just didn’t want anybody to eat her.

Have you got that one figured yet, honey? Well, don’t feel bad. It took me most of the first day, but I got it eventually. We were both hungry, and she was afraid I’d off her and eat her. Only if I went away by myself it’d have to be somebody else. I hadn’t even been thinking about that, only about finding some way to trap the little deer or goats or whatever they were that were about the only animals we saw there. Maybe after a few more days, it would’ve been different, though. I don’t know.

If anything more happened the day I left, I don’t remember what it was. But something pretty big happened the next day. I was up on a rock, and I saw a herd of striped horses running like crazy. There might have been twenty of them, but I couldn’t see what was scaring them.

Then one went down, and I did. It was a lion and she’d got one and so she quit chasing the rest. I went there. You probably think it was a damned fool thing to do, but here’s how I figured. She had the horse, and the hungrier she was the more likely she’d eat that and not chase me. Besides, she couldn’t possibly eat the whole thing. She was bound to leave some, and just a little piece of it would hold me for a day or so. Maybe I’d get killed, but it seemed like I was bound to starve if I didn’t do something and this was something.

The problem was that I wasn’t the only one. Some big birds had seen
her kill the striped horse, too. Pretty soon six or eight were circling high up, waiting for a turn at the meat.

They weren’t the worst. Not at all! A dog showed up, and pretty soon two more. They were thinking about the striped horse, sure. But they were thinking about me, too. I could see it in the way they looked at me and the way they acted. There weren’t nearly as many rocks there as I wanted—it was most dirt and grass—but I found a few, and every time I found one I pegged it at one of those dogs. They didn’t have the guts to rush me from in front, but they kept trying to get around behind. Pretty soon I found the thing to do was to get close to the lion and her dead horse, only keep my back to them. She didn’t want to jump me, she was too busy eating. And she’d start getting nasty any time one of those dogs got close.

Finally I stunned one with a rock. It fell down, and when it did, I ran up and stabbed it in the neck. The other two tore into it, which didn’t surprise me at all.

Pretty soon the lion finished eating and started dragging her horse away. I followed her, not getting too close and watching behind me a lot more than ahead. She dragged it down a rocky slope to a little place where there were slopes or little cliffs all around, and bushes a lot bigger than grass. There were weeds there way higher than my head, weeds that rattled together. You probably don’t believe it, honey, and I don’t blame you. But there were. They came in handy, too.

When the lion got her horse there, she covered it up with bushes and grass. Some of it was dead stuff she raked together, and some was stuff she tore up herself, not using her paws but biting the stems.

When she finished, she went off into the rocks and drank. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but I could hear her and felt like I’d found a new knife. I wanted water at least as much as I wanted food, and I knew that where I was now the river water was bound to be bad.

Probably I should’ve gone for the striped horse then, but I didn’t. I waited for her to come up. She was as pretty a lion as I’ve ever seen, maybe as pretty as anybody ever has, darker than most of them with the little black marks on her face you see sometimes. It was a good face, too—good bone under the skin, and she moved sort of like one of those spotted cats. Her feet never made a sound, and it seemed like nothing she did took extra effort.

Well, honey, I told her I just wanted one little piece off her horse, and I showed her how big I meant with my hands. I said I’d run off the dogs, which was kind of true, and they’d have taken it all. She agreed with that, so after that I knew I had a good chance and I tried even harder. I said I
only wanted a piece like I’d showed her, and I’d cut it off and not ruin any more while I was doing it. She could stay and watch if she wanted. Only she wouldn’t have to, because I’d be just as honest with her gone. After I got my piece I’d cover up her horse just like she had it, and add more cover I’d cut myself. She could stay and watch that, too, if she wanted.

She said no. It was her kill and I couldn’t have any.

I said, you could kill me if you wanted to. Both of us know that. You’re stronger than I am, and you can run faster. So why don’t you kill me?

She said she didn’t need to. She never killed more meat than she could eat. Killing too much meat just meant more dogs and more birds. I knew then that she hated the dogs. I could tell from the way she talked about them. So I said I’d killed a dog today.

She had seen it, so she had to agree with that.

Isn’t somebody who kills dogs better than the dogs?

She said she didn’t know, but I knew how she felt. So I said I wouldn’t ask a reward for what I’d done, but if she gave me the meat I asked for I’d kill another one for her. I’d been looking at the tall weeds, you see, and I’d had an idea.

She stared at me for a long time after that, trying to decide if I was honest. Finally I said I’d be her friend if I could, and I was starving. Wouldn’t it make sense to help me? That did it. She let me cut myself a piece and I did, no bigger than I had told her I’d take. I ate about half of it then and there.