Of Man And Manta - Ox Part 49

No creature but Orn remained to protect the nest -- and the predator was after him.

The sounds of the pursuer were growing. Orn had to run again.

The fung rose up, faltered in the air, and righted itself. There was no doubt it was in trouble; its normal grace and speed were gone.

It moved toward the predator mam.

Orn realized that disabled as it was, the fung was about to attack the mam.

That might eliminate the mam or delay him so that Orn could get safely to the nest.

He ran to the stream, went up it, found another small rep, and forced it to take him toward the nest.

All was well. The eggs were still warm, and the cub was sleeping.

Orn sat on the nest, raising the temperature of the eggs while he poked his beak into the mash prepared by the Quilon. When the cub woke, he put a portion of this mash into its mouth, holding its head upright with one wing, patiently catching the spillage and putting it back into the mouth. When the cub balked, Orn performed his most difficult ritual: He took a sh.e.l.l dish in his beak, carried it to the nearby stream, scooped it full of water, brought it back, and set it on the edge of the nest. Then he took one of the hollow-reed sections and set one end in the dish, the other in the cub's mouth. The cub sucked. Water went up the tube and into its mouth. In this way it drank.

Orn's care of the cub was another function of his memory. Ancestors had on occasion sought to preserve the lives of young animals, the cubs of those slain for food. Those cubs could mature to become prey when prey was scarce, so this was a survival talent. Even a newly hatched chick, confronted with a helpless mam cub, would have reacted similarly, sharing food, cutting reed stems, fetching water, fas.h.i.+oning warm cover. It was a symbiosis that came naturally in the time of the dominance of the great reps.

Now he cleaned the nest. The mam cub, like all mams, was a voluminous processor of water. It imbibed great quant.i.ties and expelled them almost continuously. The nest was made so that most of the fluid percolated through and fell on the ground, but in time the damp bedding soured, creating an odor problem. Orn pulled out tufts of it and replaced them carefully with fresh. This took some time, but it was necessary and natural. The cub slept. Orn covered it and the eggs and slept, too.

In the morning Orn left the nest well insulated and went out to hunt and reconnoiter. He did not take extraordinary measures to conceal his traces, for he intended to move the nest to a better place.

First he checked on the predator mam. The fung was gone, and the mam was injured; it had evidently been a savage encounter. Orn did not see the mam; he saw the site of the contest, noting the scuffled ground, the blood soaked in it -- mam blood and fung ichor -- and the bits of flesh and bone that had const.i.tuted the five extremities used to manipulate the lightning weapon. He saw the ruptured skin of the fung, the lens of the great eye, some muscle of the foot, but very little of the main body. That was odd, for the scavenger arths had not had time to consume that ma.s.s yet.

The mam had survived, badly damaged -- but he was still casting about, searching for Orn and the nest.

Orn thought of attacking the mam. It was in a weakened state, and Orn was strong; he might now be able to kill it. But if the mam possessed the fire weapon and had some way to operate it despite the loss of the small bones, Orn could not prevail. A tyrann might be crippled, but its tooth was still sharp! Orn left the mam alone.

He ran down a small brach rep, fed on it, and returned to the nest. It was full daylight now. The mam's search pattern was getting closer; he had to move the nest.

He hooked his neck through the harness and pulled. He would take it to a warm cave high in the mountain ridge. There the eggs could remain warm steadily, and the cub would be protected. Caves made good nesting places -- sometimes.

But the route was difficult. He had to pa.s.s through the territories of two predator reps, slowed by the nest, and pursued by the mam. He had to navigate the fringe of a mud flat. Then the steep slope, where he would be exposed to the mam's lightning weapon.

Orn did not concern himself with the odds. He moved out.

He pa.s.sed through the tyrann's region safely. Once this section had been the territory of a larger tyrann, who had pursued the Quilon up the mountain and perished in the cold; the new tyrann had not yet fully a.s.similated the enlarged area. It might be asleep or occupied elsewhere.

But the smaller rep predator, a struth, caught him.

Struth was as like Orn as a rep could be. He had long legs, a slender neck, and he was within twice Orn's ma.s.s. He therefore regarded Orn as a direct compet.i.tor.

With a scream of outrage, Struth charged. Orn ducked out of the harness and scooted around the cart to face the rep. He would have to fight -- otherwise, Struth would gobble the eggs and cub.

Orn's ancestry had had much experience with Struth. The rep was tough. Only in the cool morning could Orn match it, for then the rep's speed and reflexes were slowed.

This was morning.

Orn dodged aside as Struth charged. He brought up one foot, using his sharp claws to rake the rep's side with the powerful downstroke.

It was a good shot. A soft-skinned mam would have been disemboweled. But the tough hide of the rep protected it so that all it suffered was a nasty sc.r.a.pe and the severance of several small muscles. Meanwhile, its teeth whipped around, snapping in air not far from Orn's neck.

But Orn was ready for that motion. His beak stabbed forward, scoring on the rep's eye. The creature screamed with pain and pulled back.

Orn raised his foot again to make the evisceration strike, his best technique. But the rep's jaws closed on his elevated foot, for it was taller than he.

Immediately, desperately, Orn struck with his beak, punching out the other eye. The rep let go -- but Orn's foot had been mangled.

He made one more strike against the blind Struth with his good foot. This time it was effective. Dying, his intestines spilling out, the rep collapsed. He snapped savagely at his own guts, trying to vanquish the pain.

Orn took no time to feed, tempting as the sight of those burgeoning entrails were. The mam would catch up! He returned to the nest, hooked his neck through, and limped forward. Weight on his injured foot pained him increasingly, but he went on jerkily.

He reached the mud flat. The mud was hot today; huge bubbles rose, expanded, and popped. But a detour around this area would greatly extend his route and take him back through Tyrann's territory. Lame as he was, that was not to be risked.

The best path through it would take him near several of the largest bubble-pits. Alone, he might manage it, even injured as he was. Hauling the nest made it far more difficult.

But if he made it, the boiling mud would serve as an equal barrier to the mam. Perhaps a fatal one.

He moved ahead, twisting around the hot pits with the inspiration of desperation. He had to keep the nest moving, for the wheels tended to sink in the soft surface.

He heard a noise. His head swiveled. The predator mam had emerged from the foliage. The creature was swathed in material. Sticks were bound to its limbs and fabric covered its torso -- not its normal removable plumage but tight patches covering wounds. Orn did not have to reason out the combat; his observation of the site of the engagement with the fung, coupled with the present condition of the mam, were sufficient to form the picture.

The fung had struck at the weapon first, nullifying it, leaving the mam to his own resources. Next, the fung had cut at the mam's broad neck. The mam had protected his neck with his limbs, and so those limbs had been deeply sliced: flesh from bone. But once the mam got his appendages on the fung, he had torn it apart, killing it.

Afterward, the mam had bound up his wounds to stop the loss of body fluids, using the sticks to fix the bones in place. And continued his pursuit of Orn. A formidable predator!

A huge bubble developed almost beneath Orn. It was a slow riser that had given no prior signal of its presence; Orn had judged this section safe.

He jerked forward, trying to haul the cart to safety. But its wheels were deep in the mud loosened by the bubble. He only succeeded in sliding it directly into the air cavity as it erupted.

The cart tipped, spilling one egg into the hot mud, then another. The cub wailed. Orn flapped his wings, striving for leverage against the air. But the harness entangled them.

The bubble burst. Scorching gas enveloped Orn. He squawked in agony, then inhaled the vapor into his lungs.

Burning inside and out, Orn sank into the bubble. As the heat of it cooked him, his glazing eyes saw a strange glow with many sparkling points. It coalesced about the nest, about the one remaining egg and the mam cub.

This was the one experience Orn's ancestry had been unable to bequeath to him: the death of the individual. Heat, pain, and a cloud of lights. Mud-matted feathers. Sinking.

The strangest thing about it was the apparent surprise of the watching predator. The mam was not dying; why was he sharing Orn's experience?

Chapter 20.

UNIT.

The unit phased into the forest-frame, orienting on the location of the two mams.