The Visitor (11 page)

This increased volume of sound and his anxiety-provoked tension were the only gradual transition given to him in preparation to his entry into hell. However, as to the scene...

Unveiled suddenly before him was an ocean of suffering which ranged, it seemed, into infinity. He was four meters above the rows of dairy bovs. Thus, he saw them all the way as far as his gaze could go. The shock was so brutal that he didn’t even notice the two lightning-slayers slowly approaching between the first two rows, just under him. The emotional scope of wailing and sobbing was so extensive that they all became indistinguishable to him. It was no longer individuals who were crying, it was his entire species. He thought that they must be all collected here. It was such a certainty for him that he began to wonder by what miracle he had escaped this obviously forced gathering, but he ceased to wonder once he became conscious that there were only female victims here. When his shocked gaze was no longer lost among the multitude, that it managed to attach itself to those who were at the forefront and then, he noticed the monstrous hypertrophied mammary infirmity, he noted the small size of their prison, he was struck by the extreme thinness of their limbs, and when catching their gaze, it revealed that they were wearing their life as a burden, once he had received all these visions as violent blows to his heart, he screamed in turn. His screams and his tears came together with those that tore through his heart. He screamed and screamed again, he wept and wept just as much.

But no more than a drop of water in a deluge, he couldn’t be heard. Losing consciousness, he fell forward.

*

Ikkillu, as we recall, head of the Veterinary Department, was walking between rows one and two of the dairy bovs. She was accompanied by Ekkbokk, her best assistant. He was a competent green uma. Although he used a language that was a little rustic at times, she didn’t find it unpleasant to be in his company.

Usually, Ikkillu worked in her office, setting the dosage of each puree antibiotic based on the analysis of blood and of various other samples, taken from the animals by personnel under her direction. Also, she determined the dosage of anabolic steroids and growth hormones for the meat bovs, lactation stimulatory hormones for the dairy bovs... Today, she came here compelled and forced by circumstances. The smell was unbearable and she didn’t like seeing all these animals suffer. But the profession being what it is... The mission her superiors had entrusted her with was to imagine how to build facilities to accommodate limbless dairy bovs. While other professionals of her team were already setting about the task of amputating the young animals, her mission was to imagine what could be done to be able to harness them here while spending the least amount of money possible. She was told that the competition held them up with straps. Wondering if it wouldn’t be easier to hang them in netting, she was discussing it with Ekkbokk:

“
Why not use nets?” she said.
 

“
Yeah! Why not?” he said. “Provided that it doesn’t hinder their breasts...”
 

“
Crazy idea all the same," she confided to herself.
 

“
You mean depriving them of their limbs or using a net?”
 

“
Of their limbs, obviously!”
 

“
Yeah! Crazy idea! Should the public learn of it, we'll pass for monsters once again! You know, associations like Two One Four will once more be screaming scandal.”
 

“
That’s what makes me worry. But it seems that we have no choice.”
 

Ekkbokk retrieved his beak polisher, a small square of felted fabric, from an inside pocket of his jacket and he rubbed his beak while answering:

“
It’s quite indecent of them to put pressure on us, with all the problems we have at the moment. On top of the economic crisis facing our sector, still we must endure all those persons who have no other concern than the livestock’s comfort! Those assholes, they want us to our jobs...”
 

It was at that point that, thirty meters ahead, they saw a bov fall heavily to the floor between the two rows. It was a male. Obviously savage. That was visible at first glance. Meat bovs, stuffed full of anabolic steroids, had five to six times higher muscle mass. Compared to such hypertrophy of muscles, it appeared skinny.

“
Where did this fucking beast come from?” cried Ekkbokk.
 

“
From there," said Ikkillu showing the entry to the conduit tunnel.
 

“
Apparently, yeah! But... what was it doing up there?”
 

“
I don’t know. Phone security. Don’t go near, it could bite.”
 

She could just as well have made the call herself, but any opportunity to give orders was her way to express hierarchy. So she rarely made herself useful when a subordinate was at her disposal to perform any given action; unless doing it would be valorizing for her.

The event had sown disorder among the dairy bovs in the vicinity of the intruder; their agitation was visible. For the first time, something had interrupted the eternal monotony of their miserable existence.

While Ekkbokk was on the phone with the security service, having, it seemed, a hard time to be understood, she noted that the animal had something she had trouble identifying on its left shoulder and a part of its neck. Perfectly still, lying on its back, left leg and right arm in improbable positions that betrayed fractures, it didn’t seem very dangerous. Approaching carefully nevertheless, she discovered the nature of what had intrigued her. She showed it to her assistant who had followed her and had just hanged up:

“
Look!”
 

“
Shit! Dressings? How about that?”
 

“
So, what did they tell you?”
 

“
There’s someone coming to see. They had trouble understanding. They thought that I was telling them bullshit.”
 

“
I hope they'll hurry. You should have specified that a dozen beasts have gotten agitated.”
 

“
I told them to move their ass," he assured.
 

“
I wonder how this animal could fit in there," she said looking at the entrance of the conduit tunnel.
 

“
I was asking myself the same question. Somewhere, something was poorly closed. But what do you think of these dressings?”
 

“
It’s necessarily a tamed beast. Unless it is escaped from an experimentation lab...”
 

“
Yeah, that’s possible! In any case, you don't think that it would be wise to report it to the bosses. You never know.”
 

“
That’s what I'm about to do, it just so happens.”
 

*

Exhausted by the bad night that he had suffered through, Akkal decided to reserve his afternoon for resting. His headache hadn’t weakened, maintained as it was by all his preoccupations for accounting, investments, supplier invoices, rental of advertising space, taxation, updates to standards, distribution, applications for rebates, costing, unpaid items, social security contributions, health verification... To forget it all, he wanted to go hunting. This is what he was preparing to do by changing clothes, under the lifeless eyes of the stuffed heads, when his phone rang. He picked it up and without hiding his bad mood shot back:

“
I'm not available till tomorrow. I don't want to be bothered! Unless it’s of vital importance!”
 

“
Up to you to decide," said Ykkypol. “A wild bov got itself into the dairy bov building. It has bandages on his shoulder.”
 

“
But!... What?”
 

“
Ikkillu was the one that told me. To avoid disturbing you, I went to see. Well, it’s true. A wild bov fell from one of the ducts. You know, the tunnels where electricity and various fluids enter... Well, in short, there really were dressings. I thought that maybe it was the one that you injured in the hunt and that you put in a cage for your daughter.”
 

“…”

“
Hey ? You're still there? What do we do? Do I put it in the grinder or do you want to come see what it’s about?”
 

Akkal didn’t want to enter the building. Even less since he had taken the decision to amputate them.

“
No, don’t send it to grinding. Have it captured and brought to me in front of my house.”
 

“
Capturing it won't be hard. It looks like it’s already dead... at least, it isn’t moving.”
 

“
Well, well... Then, put it in a vehicle and come. Alone, if you please. And above all, don’t tell anyone where you’re going. No one needs to know.”
 

“
Understood…”
 

Akkal hung up and ran as fast as he could towards the cage under the trees. When he discovered the broken floor, he stood puzzled a few seconds, staring at it as if he was waiting for his eyes to confirm what they presumed to see. Scratching his forehead’s green scales, he reached for his phone.

*

“
In this sequence, you see two male bovs about to spar," said Okkala showing film excerps. It so happens that they don’t fight, but each tries to impress the other. Observe carefully the position of the hair over their eyes.”
 

Akkaliza wrinkled the green and blue scales of her neck, which, for umas, was a sign of a great concentration.

“
Yes, I see...”
 

Her aunt showed her a second sequence in another part of the screen:

“
Look, there! It’s the same bov, but this time he's in the presence of his child. You’ll notice that in this case the hair above the eyes... “
 

She stopped because Akkaliza’s phone began to ring.

“
It’s my father," she reported looking at the device’s display.
 

The vibrations of the scales on her cheeks expressed surprise and concern:

“
Yes? Great!”
 

After a moment, she hung up and informed her aunt:

“
Sneaky has been found. I have to go!”
 

*

Akkaliza arrived two minutes after Ykkypol. He had already put the body of the escapee on the grass at twenty meters from the house. Falling to her knees before the animal, she discovered with horror the fractures to his limbs. The one on the right arm, open and particularly horrible, made her shriek. However, she was reassured to see that he was still breathing.

The two Nature Foods shareholders exchanged glances. Akkal’s made it clear that he wanted to be alone with his daughter. Ykkypol nodded and left.

“
What happened?” asked Akkaliza.
 

“
I was going to ask you the same question. You hadn’t told me that you had released it. We hadn’t discussed that possibility.”
 

“
I didn’t release him. He escaped all by himself.”
 

“
Please, don’t take me for a fool!”
 

His crest stretched backwards expressing his annoyance.

“
Go see the cage! He broke through the floor. “
 

“
I saw the cage, Akkaliza! Your subterfuge is ridiculous. Make me believe that it broke it by itself! Tell me also that it drove off in a car!”
 

Akkaliza didn’t answer as her protégé started to moan.

“
Dad, he’s regaining conciousness! He’s in pain! He’s in pain! We'll talk more about this later. Please call one of your vets.”
 

Without waiting for his answer, she rushed into the house to look for something to sedate the injured bov. She thought of immobilizing him fearing that in his fright, he could aggravate his fractures in wanting to flee. There were two doses of narcotics left. She prepared a syringe in her room and ran down the stairs at full speed, fearing that her father and the hinecs would scare him during her absence. When she arrived on the doorstep, Akkal, rifle in hand, was approaching the injured bov. She wanted to intervene, but he motioned for her to get out of the way:

“
Now, enough is enough with this beast! I’ve had more than enough!” he cried shouldering while she lunged at him.
 

The bullet struck her lower left arm. The pain was terrible, but she still had the strength to shout:

“
If you kill him, I’ll commit suicide!”
 

And then she fainted.

*

Mahisa had just eaten some berries, lots of hazelnuts and two apples. This wasn’t enough to satiate her fully, but she felt much better. She resumed her trek. Since the morning, she no longer followed a dirt road, but a strange thing that still had the general shape of a wide path, but that was very smooth, without any earth, gravel or grass. It could only be a path that led to the lightning-slayers’ world, as she saw them more and more frequently inside their round-footed monsters. Mahisa took good care not to be seen by staying behind the vegetation cover. She kept thinking of Etos. Almost all the time, she was mentally speaking to him, and sometimes even out loud, as if he was near her. It did her good. For example,
see how huge that four round legged thing is
, she would say. She also loved to evoke the moment when she would make him touch her womb, trying to imagine his reaction. Sometimes she also worried about her little brother and her parents, but it was always back to Etos that her mind returned.

*

In her Director’s office of the space agency, Ekklamisa was reading a technical article about the specific thrust from different propellants. She was at a lost on how to make the public more interested in space, which would facilitate the acquisition of more credits to develop more efficient propulsion systems.

Ekklamisa was an athletic looking blue, although she abhorred sports of any kind. She devoted her life to the conquest of the cosmos. Fascinated by space, nothing else held any interest. It was with nostalgia that she thought of the cold war eras that promoted space race competition between rival nations.