Spring 2007 (25 page)

Now, he thought, to the city.

The Borgans had believed with a passion that no man
walking upright could enter Redwater. It was surrounded by curses, and everyone
knew the ghosts of the leopard priests had the cold jealousy of the dead. Ervin
himself had seen three Borgan youths race toward the walls in broad daylight,
passions aflame with dares and counter-dares, before dropping dead in the
grass. Older warriors had crawled in upon all fours to drag them forth.

The boys had no marks upon their bodies.

He reasoned that while the idea of a curse was plain
foolery, it was possible some strange weapon from the ancient days existed
within the ruins. Perhaps it threw a line of force at the height of a running
man’s beating heart. Perhaps it knew the shape of a man, through the workings
of some dimly clever electromechanical eye. The Borgans and their brother
tribes were charmingly primitive and downright obtuse, but it was clear enough
to Ervin that an industrial civilization had once stood here.

Someone had the means to raise the great slabs which
comprised the ruins of Redwater, after all. It would take more than crowds of
slaves to do such work.

By going crouched within the skin of a leopard he would
twice over fool whatever defenses lurked within. Further, if the Borgans were
spying on him as they so often did when he descended from his solitary hills,
they would see him go in as a leopard. To be known to those savages a skin
changer could only stoke their fear of him. That in turn would build respect in
their simple minds, and give Ervin the freedom of action he required for his
longer-term plans.

He slunk through the grass, moving in his best
approximation of a leopard’s loping bound. The hardest part of this rig was
seeing right before him. He accomplished this by tossing his head and looking
beneath the fearsome teeth which framed the opening in front of his face.

The walls were close before him. Ervin’s sense of
direction had not betrayed him. The hand-boots were saving him great trouble
and pain as well.

He loped onward, through the massive gates which had
stood unbarred for three generations since the downfall of the city.

###

The streets were paved, which was strange for this
world. Few went mounted and there were no carts or carriages here, let alone
motorcars. Stranger still, the pavers were hexagonal. The effect was that of
running across a vast stone honeycomb.

Ervin’s goal was to steal the leopard’s paw. It was the
most sacred relic of the leopard priests. Legend said that the attack on the
city had failed to breach the great temple, which was defended by skin
changers. The Borgans and their temporary allies had burned out the city
instead before retreating as the curse was laid down.

He reasoned that the paw would still be inside the temple.
The priests were certainly dead, and their savage cult with them. There had
been not so much as a balefire inside Redwater since the city was destroyed.
With the widespread belief in the cure, no one would have come to steal it.
With the leopard’s paw in his hands, Ervin could bring the tribes to his word.
Not to mention extract satisfaction from the troublesome Borgans.

He found his way to the center of the city, stopping
only for the briefest glimpses from beneath his mask. The streets were clear at
the centers but the verges were a jumble of rubble and dirt. Redwater seemed to
be built on a radial plan. This was just as he had expected from looking at the
city from a distance. Not to mention being consistent with the psychology of a
religious center.

Running on all fours, Ervin found that he was more
adapted to the curious gait. He trusted his finely-honed body to meet any
challenge required of it. This was near his limits, though. He was pleased how
well he was settling in.

Let the Borgans fear the leopard!

Soon enough he was in the central plaza. The dim light
of the moonless night meant the temple bulked large as if it were new-built. It
was difficult to see the signs of ruin here.

He bounded up the wide, shallow steps toward gaping
black maws which had once been doors. Inside he would shed the skin and move
deftly on two feet, as man was meant to. Ervin paused at the top of the steps,
turned to face the empty city, and on an impulse released a great roar which
echoed over the stone rooftops.

Much to his surprise, there was an answer to his
challenge from nearby.

His blood ran hot. His vision flashed red a moment,
while the hair on his body stood up. Once more he was confronted with a true
leopard while unprepared to fight like man or beast! He had not considered that
the scene by the creek might repeat itself.

There was nothing for it but to roar out his challenge
once more.

This time the animal trotted into the square. The
creature was a lighter shadow in the inky pools of blackness. He could see it
pause, settle onto its haunches and issue another mighty challenge. The cat was
insolent, he would give it that.

Then it leapt forward, racing up the stairs. Ervin stood
to meet it and found he could not. The wicker and the pelt bound him too
tightly. He snarled and hurled himself down the stairs on all fours, tail
lashing.

The two sabretooth leopards collided in a snarling ball
of fur and claws and teeth. They rolled back down into the plaza, each seeking
a grip on the other’s throat. Ervin slashed with his claws, laying open his
attacker’s flank. Then he realized what was happening.

He had
become
the leopard.

Skin changer indeed.

Even in another body, his spirit was a finely-honed
weapon, his intellect dedicated to fine and brutal arts of combat. His muscles
seemed to know what was wanted of him in this new form. His human self within
did not know how to lose. Someday, when death claimed him at sword point or
bloody-toothed, Ervin would die winning.

She (for he was suddenly all too keenly aware that the
other was a leopardess) caught her foreclaws in his chest. His great back legs
came into play and he hooked her in the belly.

They rolled again to fetch up against the broken base of
some fountain. He snapped at her neck, just missing, as she tried to wiggle out
of his hold. Then she bit at him, catching the skin.

Their muzzles nearly touched in an eerie feline
imitation of a human kiss. With that thought he found himself in his own form
once more. The sensation of the change was elastic and electrifying, much like
the touch of arcane scientific forces which had first projected him to this
world.

Was skin changing nothing more than some ancient weapon?
Perhaps the same which imposed the strictures of the curse.

In that same moment the leopardess writhed and changed
to a woman. She was voluptuous, with bosoms each bigger than the span of his
outstretched hand. Her female form was completely unclothed save for a bath of
sweat and blood from the scratches he had laid upon her.

As distracting as her scent and proximate nudity might
be, Ervin did not for a moment lose sight of the fact that they had just been
fighting a battle to the death. He pinned her, his strength in human form far
superior to her distaff physique.

“You have the advantage of me, ma’am,” he growled, some
trace of the leopard’s roar still in his voice.

“You are the outlander,” she replied.

“Jacob Ervin, at your service.”

She thrust her groin against him. “Truly?”

“Later, perhaps.” He grinned. Ervin was not a man to be
distracted by the rushing of blood to his nether parts. “Why did you seek to
kill me?”

“It was you who gave challenge.”

“Truce?”

She nodded. “Truce.”

They both stood, stretching sore and wounded muscles.
Ervin’s own carefully constructed wickerwork and hide was shredded. The woman
seemed to have nothing but her skin. She also possessed the refreshing
unselfconsciousness of the primitive. Her beauty was clothing enough.

“It is my plan to go within and retrieve the leopard’s
paw,” he told her. “Are you set on stopping me?”

“I am afraid I cannot allow that,” she said.

“Why do you defend this place? It is nothing but dead
stone and ashes.”

She shrugged. “Why do you attack it?”

“Because those who care about it are too craven. I would
make them an example of my courage.”

“Then be brave,” she said. She touched the bottom of his
chin. “Do not throw away your life, Jacob Ervin.”

He stepped back, admiring her sweat-slicked form
gleaming in the starlight. Had there been a moon this night he might have seen
every curve and fold of her glorious body, but this was enough. Ervin thought
he understood who this woman was.

Turning away from her, he ignored his own turgidity. She
would follow or not. He would deal with her or not. His hearing was as superb
and finely honed as the rest of his physique, and so he listened as his foot
touched the first step.

There was a sort of rustle. She was returning to form.

A second step, and he heard a rush of air as she sprung
off her back feet.

A third step, and he knew she would drop to bite the
back of his head, as these cats did.

Ervin spun around, swinging his mighty fist at the spot
in the air where he knew her skull must pass. She snapped her great fangs, her
breath hot and close enough to fill his nose, but the blow of his hammer hand
broke her skull.

The leopardess collapsed into the steps in a steaming
heap. She kicked twice, then melted, fading to old bones and tattered fur.

“No clothing, no fur,” he told the corpse as it receded
through the generations of time back toward the sacking of the city. “A man
needs scraps to become a leopard. But when a leopard becomes a man, well… You
should have been less quick to fight.”

Such a waste, he thought. She had been beautiful in both
her forms.

He turned his attention to the temple, stepping into the
shadows within to search for the leopard’s paw.

###

Dawn found him walking from the ruins of Redwater
upright as a man should. The leopard’s paw was heavy in his hand. It was a
large nugget of gold, roughly in the shape of its namesake, with three white
crystals where the claws might be.

His greater treasure, though, was the weathered skull
he’d found on the bottom of the temple steps when he exited. She had aged her
years in dying, and so this bone was three generations old. But when Ervin
raised his standard and took the tribes north to make war against the buzzard
men from beyond the wall, the leopardess would watch over him.

A shame, he thought. He should have sampled her kiss
when he had the chance. Ervin was certain he’d never meet her like again.

He turned, looking at the
city as it rose in dawn’s red glare, and gave one last, echoing roar. Thanks,
apologies, tribute to a fallen foe. It was of no real account. Only the next
battle mattered.

Fiction
The Lost Continent of Moo: A Lucifer Jones Story by Mike
Resnick

Part I

You know, there’s one thing I ain’t never figgered out,
and man and boy it’s been bothering me most of my blameless life, and even now
as a old man I haven’t come up with an answer, and I’ve had a lot of time to
think about it since it was always happening to me, even back in 1935 which is
when the tale I’m telling you took place, and though I’ve wandered the face of
five continents (or maybe seven, if you count them two little ones down south)
I still don’t know why it takes me such a short time to get lost and such a
long time to get found again.

In fact, that was my very thought as I left Cornelius
MacNamarra’s chartreuse mansions behind me and mosied alongside the Amazon, waiting
for civilization to raise its head so I could get together with it and finally
get around to the serious business of building the Tabernacle of Saint Luke.
But the closest I came to civilization in the next week was a couple of little
fellers who were wearing paint on their faces and not much else. They didn’t
speak no known language, which is something they had in common with the French,
and they kept staring at me as if they were wondering how my head would look in
their trophy case, so I finally took my leave of them.

I wish I could have took my leave of everything else,
because I kept getting et by mosquitos and hissed at by snakes and growled at
by jaguars and giggled at by monkeys, and after I’d footslogged maybe another
hundred miles and still hadn’t seen no shining cities filled to overflowing
with sinners who were in desperate need of a man of the cloth like myself, I
figgered maybe the cities had all migrated to the south when no one was
looking, so I took a left turn and put the Amazon River behind me.

Now, I knew South America had a bunch of cities even
back then, places like Rio and Buenos Aires and Caracas and Saigon, but it was
like they’d seen me coming and had all tiptoed away before I could lay eyes on
any of ‘em. I picked up a female companion named Petunia along the way. She was
a real good listener, but she didn’t say nothing and she smelled just terrible,
especially after a rainstorm (of which we had an awful lot), and after a few
days I finally had to admit that I just didn’t have much in common with lady
tapirs, and we parted ways.