Genus Homo Page 17

  "They don't seem to care for fighting before breakfast," Zbradovski remarked.

  "Neither do our bunch," said Wilson, his mouth full of a very dry sandwich. "Personally I'm not sorry."

  The sun climbed higher in the sky, and a drum began to beat, answered by another. The baboons were moving about. Soon their battle-standards—poles with bunches of leather strips fastened to the end—were set up, and the horde began to get into formation. The gorillas hunched lower in their trench, while their officers went the rounds giving last-minute instructions.

  The drum beat changed from tum-a-tum, tum-a-tum to something like ta-ta-tum-tum-tum, ta-ta-tum-tum-tum. More drums took up the rhythm until the ground seemed to have with their dull thunder. The baboons were moving—first lines of javelin-throwers with bundles of missiles slung over their backs; then great squares of lancers. The sun flashed on their accoutrements. "God, I wish they'd do something!" muttered Wilson. "Watching 'em close in at a slow walk this way gets my nanny."

  Tata-tum, tata-tum went the drums, and with a football-crowd roar the baboon horde charged. Like the first drops of a rainstorm a few javelins fell; then came a shower; then came the baboons. As the gorillas opened fire, the first baboons piled up on the ground in squirming heaps; those behind bounded over the bodies and swarmed into the ropes, where they in turn were shot down, so that their bodies festooned the entanglement in grotesque attitudes.

  The first two ranks of those who charged the machine-arbalest went down like rows of children's blocks; those behind broke and scattered right and left. Then the crew of the machine pushed it to the other end of the camp and repeated their performance. Stink-bombs, dropped wherever the attack was hottest, sent hundreds of the monkeys reeling away, sneezing and retching. A few baboons got through the ropes and rushed the trench, but before they could be supported they were either lying dead or galloping off out of range.

  In a few minutes it was over—the baboons had withdrawn, leaving nearly two hundred dead or wounded lying around the gorilla camp, and the big apes were tying up javelin-wounds and lighting their pipes as if it was all in the day's work.

  Three days later nothing had changed, except that the corpses had begun to stink. The gorillas worked on their fortifications; the baboons went about their baboonish tasks at a safe distance. On the morning of the fourth day the sky, whose overcast condition had made the gorillas' heliographs useless, cleared, and there was a brisk north wind. Daylight showed the baboons clustered around a line of newly-erected haystacks north of the grove. Mmpl sought out the men.

  "They're planning a smoke-screen," he said, "so they can get close before we can see to shoot. Here are a couple of arbalest-pistols; I think you're strong enough to work them. Get in under the trees with the wounded, and try to pick off any Pfenmll that get through our line. Don't, whatever you do, get excited and shoot one of us in the back by mistake."

  Wilson accepted his weapon glumly. "You know, Sneeze," he said, "sometimes I wish I believed in a future life. The outlook for this one isn't so hot."

  As he spoke the haystacks began to smoke, and presently the thick white clouds that burning green grass gives off rolled down and blotted out the landscape.

  Wilson and Zbradovski rubbed their eyes and tried to breathe through their handkerchiefs. The drums told them what was happening behind the wall of smoke; they knew when the charge was signaled.

  The defenders could see nothing until the first baboons floundered into the ropes and impaled themselves on the sharpened stakes around the position. Some were filled with arbalest-darts, but where one fell two scrambled over his body.

  Above the general uproar the men heard the machine-arbalest clatter, then stop. They ran through the trees to that side of the camp. The wind had shifted, and the smoke pall was beginning to lift. When the men arrived they found that the gorillas had already been driven back from their entrenchments. The baboons were packed in front of the line; as the men got there, some of the monkeys in the rear climbed over the heads of those in front and launched themselves across the trench.

  Wilson shot the first one that scrambled over the grunting mass of primates in his direction; the baboon slid down the back of a gorilla and landed in a heap. His mouth opened and closed, but his yells were lost in the general racket. Zbradovski got another, but before either man could reload a third came at them with a lance. The shaft ripped through the young man's jacket; he hit the beast on the head with his pistol.

  The monkey blinked, reared, and sank his fangs in Zbradovski's shoulder. Another swung a short bludgeon at Wilson's head; the man ducked, and a gorilla brought the baboon down with a flying tackle. Wilson finally got a fresh load into his pistol and blew out the baboon's brains as it struggled with its tackier. His next shot was a clean miss; the intended target knocked the pistol out of his hand with its lance-butt and came at him with its yellow teeth bared. The baboons were breaking in; they were everywhere among the trees, in a minute it would be all over . . .

  Macdonald's cavalry was lined up outside the village, each trooper standing beside her pig. Macdonald yelled "Mount!" and the apes climbed smartly into their saddles. "By the right flank!" he shouted, and was about to add "March!" when a yell from the observation tower made him look up. The she-gorilla was calling through a megaphone: "Baboons in the west, coming along the Dlldah road! I think they're a small party."

  Macdonald's brain buzzed furiously. Should he leave the village to take care of itself? Then he thought, better try this gang out on a small party before we tackle anything big, even if it does mean a delay. So he shouted, "By the left flank—march! Trot!" and the line of pigs rumbled off.

  Two miles from the village a lone baboon popped into view around a bend in the road. He turned tail and scampered out of sight, but was back immediately. Behind him came others. Those in front advanced more and more slowly, so that those behind crowded up on them, chattering furiously. They seemed never to have seen draft-pigs before, or at least pigs with gorillas riding them, and they seemed not to like the looks of what they saw.

  The pigs, on their part, found the baboons' looks no more to their liking. Macdonald's mount slowed up and zigzagged, and presently turned broadside, blocking the road and squealing with alarm. At the sight the baboons came on with a whoop. They paused halfway to let fly their usual volley of javelins; the spears swished through the foliage and thudded into the pigs' hides. One gorilla thumped to the ground; another yelled in pain. Then all other sounds were drowned in a roar as of all Nebuchadnezzar's lions.

  Macdonald's pig bucked like a steer, almost sending the cop flying, then hurled himself at the enemy, his snout almost touching the ground and his little eyes red with hate. The other pigs thundered behind him. The leading baboon tried to run, but Macdonald's mount caught him neatly with an upward snap of his great head. The baboon commander sailed high in the air and came down in the rear of his troop. Another landed in the crotch of a tree and stayed there. Those which the pigs did not have time to toss into the trees were trampled into shapeless puddles of blood and hair.

  Suddenly the remnant of the baboons was fleeing like leaves before a storm. Macdonald's pig, twelve feet of baboon intestine trailing from his left tusk, led the pursuit. The pigs, completely out of control, spread out to hunt baboons and for half an hour barged about the forest, rooting monkeys out of the holes in which they tried to hide and butting trees that they had climbed to shake them loose. Hours passed before all the pigs had been collected again and calmed sufficiently to be manageable.

  Shortly after sunrise the next morning, a red-eyed ex-cop halted his column at the top of a rise, dismounted, stretched, and peered off to the eastward. Those guys who talk about sleeping in the saddle never tried riding one of these porkers all night, he thought. Then he saw a plume of smoke rising above the trees, and to his ears came a sound like a world-series game heard at a distance.

  He scrambled back into the saddle. "Fight's on!" he shouted. "Mount! By threes—trot!" And of
f they went.

  They reached the edge of the forest just as the baboons closed in on the gorilla camp. A few minutes more and they had pounded through the baboon encampment and were upon the rear of the monkey army. Macdonald tried to deploy his company, but the first whiff of baboon had driven the pigs mad again, and the column plowed through the foe like a needle through butter.

  The first the besieged gorillas knew of what was happening was when the baboons, locked in death-struggle with them, suddenly fell back. It looked as though the baboons had lost their wits, for they had not only given up their attack at the moment of victory, but were rushing about the plain in utter disorder, yelling their heads off. Then, over the baboons' heads, appeared a long line of black shapes topped by equally black gorillas. As the line plowed forward through the smoke, baboons flew into the air like popping popcorn.

  They passed the grove and emerged on the far side of the baboon horde without casualties. It's no use trying to steer these things, Macdonald decided; you get 'em into formation first and hope to God they all run the same way. He got his company turned around and formed into a strung-out line which should cut a real swath on their next charge.

  As they rolled forward the baboon army opened and spewed out the Imperial Guard, trotting in smart formation with the king himself at their head. A pig thundered at the king, who braced his lance and tried to catch it in the eye. The lance-point struck the pig's forehead and the shaft snapped like a toothpick; the next moment the king's body, ripped nearly in two, was cartwheeling over his Guard's heads. In five minutes the entire baboon force, including what was left of the Guard, was galloping off the field in a huge cloud of dust with the pigs slashing and trampling in their rear. The pursuit continued over plain and hills, until the company, mounts and riders alike, were too exhausted to continue. Splashed with blood from top to toe they straggled back to the camp at a weary, plodding walk.

  16

  THE STHOG-MITH

  The line of burdened wagons creaked slowly toward the familiar windmills of Dlldah. Wilson, sitting beside the driver of the second wagon, leaned back when they came in sight and told Zbradovski, who, his arm in a sling, was sitting on the floor of the wagon with the other wounded.

  "When I get there, Mort, I'm going to do nothing but sleep for a week. Ouch! Damn it, I wish that driver would learn to dodge rocks in the road!"

  "What're you kicking about? Look at what's his-name—Dzong Goo—back there. He has six bad wounds and you never hear a peep out of him. All you've got is one little monkey-bite."

  As they rolled through the village gate, the two men were immediately surrounded by those who had stayed behind.

  "One at a time—please!" Wilson begged, waving his arms. "I can't answer sixty questions at once. Yeah, we licked the pants off 'em. Sure, Enid, your husband's all right—I saw him just before we left. He'll go down in history as a great hero or something. Boy—the way those pigs of his plowed into those monks was something to watch! Yep, a lot of our side got killed; my old drinking-companion Kha Khang was one of them. No—I mean yes—there are plenty of baboons left, so the war isn't over by a long shot. The last word we had from our scouts was that they'd forded the river and were camping on a hill where Mac's pigs probably couldn't get at 'em. No—I don't know what they're going to do next, but you can bet it'll be nasty! The less I ever see again of those Goddamned monkeys . . ."

  Bridger sat in the convalescent T'kluggl's living room, poring over a map. "We'll have to do something soon," the gorilla said. "They're camped over here, and they've constructed some very respectable fortifications. I'd hate to have to try to get through with ten times the forces we have, and as Mmpl would say, the council at Mm Uth is still trying to get its committees to report.

  "It's only a matter of time before they come at us again. Some of our fighters raided the camp a few nights ago. They shot a few darts into the Pfenmll, but our enemies appear to have gotten their courage back; they came swarming out through the palisades like hornets, and of course our apes had to run for it.

  "One of them brought back a long pole with a big wad of cotton at the end, which he found in the camp. We also learned that they have a lot of alcohol with them—why, I don't know, but it suggests that they intend to soak the cotton in alcohol and use the poles as torches to scare our pigs. It's a simple plan, but it might work.

  "According to our scouts, the Pfenmll are getting hard-up for food. They caught a couple of the Sthog-mith, whose dam is only a mile or two from their camp, and ate them."

  Bridger frowned. The beaveroids wouldn't be feeling very friendly toward the baboons after having two of their number eaten.

  "I have an idea, T'kluggl," he said thoughtfully. "Maybe it won't work, but it might be worth trying. There's no point in getting into another pitched battle until we have to, even with those three hundred reinforcements the council sent along to keep us quiet. Listen . . ."

  T'kluggl listened, his wrinkled black face dubious. "If you can do that, Blidza," he said when the chemist had finished, "you will have succeeded where we have failed for a very long time. The Sthog-mith are unapproachable. Yes, I believe they like mountain ash bark best; I'll find out if any grows near here."

  Two days later, Bridger, a bundle of bark over his shoulder, walked slowly toward one end of the great dam. A hundred yards away he shouted to attract attention, put down his bundle, and retreated slowly to the edge of the woods, where a small party of Mmpl's scouts was on the watch for possible baboon foragers. Somewhat to his surprise no stones were catapulted at him.

  The chemist watched from a distance while a group of armed beaveroids came out of the tower to examine the bark. As they started back with his offerings, he advanced again, holding his hands over his head. They faced about and pointed their wooden pikes at him menacingly.

  When the pikes were almost touching his chest, Bridger began to talk in what he intended to be a reassuring tone, explaining with gestures that he wanted to go inside the tower, and that his intentions were friendly. At last the beaveroids surrounded him, still holding their pikes ready, and marched him off to their stronghold. Once he stumbled, and immediately four pike-points jabbed him in the ribs. Suspicious devils! he thought. Lord help me if they turn hostile once we're inside.

  Inside the log tower they climbed up and down ladders in semi-darkness until Bridger was completely lost. The place reeked with beaver-musk, making his head swim. He was finally pushed into a completely unfurnished room with one small window. Other beavers were there besides his hosts or captors; they talked in a whistling cry that reminded Bridger of coloratura sopranos doing their stuff. He got out a pad and pencil and went to work.

  Hours passed before the beavers finally seemed to catch on to what he was doing, and to understand that a certain arrangement of lines on the paper represented one of their kind. And I used to think I was a pretty good sketch-artist, Bridger thought ruefully. But once they caught the idea progress was rapid. When he drew a recognizable picture of a baboon, there was a hostile movement; when he crumpled the paper and threw it on the floor they relaxed somewhat and withdrew their pikes a few inches. By dark he had finished his task, and the beavers seemed to know what was expected of them.

  John Macdonald sat on his pig by the river-bank. The beast nosed among the plants and occasionally looked up with little nervous squeals.

  "Keep calm, son; keep calm," murmured the big policeman.

  He looked down at the expanse of shallows in front of him, and at the vast dam forming from his right. Seems like they ought to be along pretty soon, he thought; the drums have been getting louder. Hope my girls can keep control of their mounts. If this doesn't work we'll be in the soup for sure! Like the time back in Pitt when we caught Weepy Martin. That was a scrap . . . Hope the baboons ain't strung out in too long a line. If—ain't those the girls?

  Across the river a dozen tiny black things had popped out of the woods and were splashing across the ford. Macdonald gripped his flag—a pol
e with one of Franchot's shirts tied to it—and watched the objects grow into draft-pigs ridden by female gorillas. When they were halfway across, the first baboons appeared on the far bank. They held long poles, the ends of which flamed brightly. Hah, thought Macdonald, we were right about those torches. Here they come, and the whole damned army right behind them! Wish I knew just how long it takes those beavers to turn on their faucets. Wish I could give the signal before they get too close, but Doc says I got to wait till they're all in the river. Geez, ain't they ever going to stop coming out of the woods? The first ones are two-thirds across already. I'll wait till they get to that big rock. If I guess wrong on the time it'll be just too bad . . . Okay—here goes!

  He swung the flag in an arc over his head, back and forth, jabbed the pole into the ground to keep it flying, and charged down through the woods to rejoin his troops. The cavalry detachment had halted on the bank and were facing the oncoming baboons. At Mmpl's suggestion, the riders had been armed with arbalest-pistols, and those who had not exhausted their ammunition in the attack on the baboon camp were sending an occasional flurry of darts out over the water. The foremost baboons hesitated, waiting for more of their army to catch up. Then, over the barking of the baboons and the swish of the spillway, came a groaning sound. A jet of water appeared at the bottom of the dam and swiftly grew to the diameter of a locomotive; then another; and then the whole bottom of the dam seemed to open. Macdonald knew that inside the towers hundreds of beavers were straining on the ropes that controlled the flood-gates.

  He yelled a warning to his forces and kicked his own mount into motion. Looking over his shoulder he saw the baboon army vanish in one vast, foaming wave; their shrieks of terror sounded like the chirping of birds through the roar of rushing water. We done it! he thought, and yelled for sheer delight.

  Far down the hugely swollen river a number of little dots, like a swarm of gnats, moved about on the surface. These were the heads of swimming baboons. Gorillas appeared out of the trees on both banks, taking careful potshots at their undrowned enemies.