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that corner there, but he didn't belong here -- that is, this wasn't _his_,
this cellar. Sweets knew all that instantly, even before his eyes grew
accustomed to the place and he could see, by the gray streetlight that came
through a high small window, the man -- his eyes said "man" but he couldn't
believe them -- squatting upright in the corner there. Sweets retreated,
three-legged, neck bristling, to a corner opposite him. He tried to lower his
hurt leg, but when he put weight on it, pain seized him. He tried to lie, but
the pain wouldn't allow it. He circled, whimpering, trying to lick the wound,
bite the pain.
The small window lit whitely as a grinding noise of engines came close.
Sweets backed away, baring teeth, and began to growl, helpless not to,
answering the growl of the engines.
_Men_, he said, _men._
_No_, the other said. _We're safe. Rest._
The growl that had taken hold of Sweets descanted into a whimper. He
would rest. The light faded from the window and the noise proceeded away. Rest
. . . . Sweets's ears pricked and his mind leapt to attention. The other . .
The other still sat immobile in the corner. The gun hanging loosely in
his hand glinted. His eyes, like a dog's, caught the light when he moved his
head, and flared. Who is it?
_Who are you?_ Sweets said.
_Only another master of yours_, the other said.
Sweets said: _No man is my master anymore_.
_Long before you followed men_, the leo said, _you followed me_.
(But not "said": not even Painter, who could speak, would have told
himself he had been spoken to. Both felt only momentary surprise at this
communication, which had the wordless and instant clarity of a handshake or a
blow struck in anger.)
_I'm hurt and alone_, Sweets said.
_Not alone. It's safe here now. Rest_.
Sweets still stared at him with all his senses, his frightened and
desperate consciousness trying to sort out some command for him to follow from
the welter of fears, angers, hopes that sped from his nose along his spine and
to the tips of his ears. The smell of the leo said, Keep away from me and fear
me always. But he had been commanded by him to rest and be safe. His hurt leg
said, Stop, wait, gather strength. The rivulets of feeling began, then, to
flow together to a stream, and the substance of the stream was a command:
Surrender.
Making as much obeisance as he could with three legs, he came by inches
toward the leo; he made small puppy noises. The leo made no response. Sweets
felt this indifference as a huge grace descending on him: there would be no
contention between them, not as long as Sweets took him for master.
Tentatively, nostrils wide, ready to move away if he was repulsed, he licked
the big hand on the leo's knee, tasting him, learning a little more of the
nature of him, a study that would now absorb most of his life, though he
hadn't seen that yet. Unrepulsed, he crept carefully, by stages, into the
hollow between Painter's legs, and curled himself carefully there, still ready
to back off at the slightest sign. He received no sign. He found a way to lie
down without further hurting his leg. He began to shiver violently. The leo
put a hand on him and he ceased, the last of the shiver fleeing from the tip
of his tail, which patted twice, three times against Painter's foot. For a
time his ears still pricked and pointed, his nostrils dilated. Then, his head
pressed against the hard cords of Painter's thigh and his nose filled with the
huge, unnameable odor of him, Sweets slept.
Painter slept.
The sounds of a house-to-house search coming closer to where they hid
woke them just before dawn.
_Nowhere safe then_, Painter said.
_Only the park_, Sweets said. _We'll go there_.
(It wouldn't happen often between them, this communication, because it
wasn't something they willed as much as a kind of spark leaping between them
when a charge of emotion or thought or need had risen high enough. It was
enough, though, to keep the lion-man and the oncedog always subtly allied, of
one mind. A gift, Painter thought when he later thought about it, of our
alteration at men's hands; a gift they had never known about and which, if
they could, they would probably try to take back.)
They went out into a thin dawn fog. Sweets, quick and afraid, still
limping, stopped whenever he found himself outside the leo's halo of odor,
paced nervously, and only started off again when he was sure the other
followed, He lost the way for a time, then found traces of the pack, markings,
which were to him like a man's hearing the buzz and murmur of distant [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]