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Page 55.

During the time Alex, Keetoo, and Leeree were in the woods visiting Lector’s obelisk, word had arrived of at least one more murder in a distant village.

The victim, a young woman getting water from a pond, had her skull opened like the first, and her brain devoured. It was the unmistakable handiwork of a Siirk.

They sat at the council fire—Alex, Tzoofaa, Keetoo, and the lead warriors plus several of the alpha females including Leeree.

Leeree offered her thoughts: “This killer stalks water holes. He operates far across the land, because the second village he violated is far from the first. I dread that he comes here again.” She had looked across at Alex. “It is your woman he took here. Does that mean he will not strike here again, or was it a signal that he has marked us for death and we should wait in fear for his return.”

The warriors had clashed down their weapons with a loud shout.

Alex held up his hands to signal he was about to speak. “I will go search for this Siirk, and I will go alone. I will take his head myself.”

“Where do you go?” Tzoofaa said in surprise.

“Into the dead city if I need to. I will hunt him—“

“You can never come back here if you go there,” Tzoofaa said.

It was dark-light, and the fire flickered on the sweaty surfaces of Tzoofaa’s wizened head under the thin white hair. His eyes were filled with pain and finality. “If you go, Alex Kirk, do not come back here.”

“What if the gods are pleased with what I do?”

Tzoofaa wrinkled his brow, perplexed by Alex’s audacity and puzzled by the very concept of challenging the way things had always been and must always be. “The gods will deal with you, Alex. They brought you and that murderous fish-creature here, and they will take both of you away.” He spat. “What did we do to deserve this?” He rose, signaling the council was over for now. The spears came down with a vehement shout of “Wooloo!” Tzoofaa waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, and those attending dispersed into the night.

Tzoofaa signaled for Alex to stay. “I do not send you away in complete disfavor.”

“Thank you,” Alex said gratefully.

Tzoofaa stood on a boulder so that they were eye to eye. “I do not confuse what causes things with what happens from them. We have learned much from listening to Lector’s visions, including our speech, which is so much like yours. I know this, Alex.” He looked at Alex gravely, and Alex waited. The old man projected power and insight, and anyone would feel intimidated despite his small stature. “You are a new person, like we are, but you represent the past, Alex. The old people had great power, but they displeased the gods and therefore they are all long dead. We are the new people, and we remain in the favor of the gods. Whatever you do, good luck.” He put a hand on Alex’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” Alex said.

“Sleep well. In the new light we will pray goodbye, and never see each other again. That is how it must be.”

The next day, the villagers saw Alex off.

Leeree gave him a tiny carved fetish representing what looked like a Lector obelisk with a circle sign carved into it. She also gave him a shoulder sling with small packets of food. Keetoo and several warriors came to shake hands, and presented Alex with a large wooden bow and arrows suited to his size. Tzoofaa gave him a nicely made stone knife to keep in his shoulder sling. Alex thanked them all and almost regretfully turned to begin his journey. The path took him away, but he looked back and saw them standing on the hills waving, and smelled the food of their fires for at least an hour.

His first stop was the lake, to say goodbye to Maryan one last time. He dove down repeatedly through the animalcule-rich bottle green water. It was cool and pleasant in its mildly fetid way. It took him a dozen dives until he oriented himself. He paddled slowly through waving underwater grasses and kelp, trailing bubbles, until he saw the sandbank on which he had last seen her body. He saw only the wooden arrow that had killed her and little else. Her skull peered from the sand where the current had buried it, and a few ribs and delicate female finger bones—that was all.

Impulsively, he picked up the arrow and swam back to the surface. Sputtering, he swam back to shore, where he put the arrow in his quiver along with about twenty others already in there. It slightly larger and cruder than the fine work of the LooWoo! and its stone head had been roughly chipped, unlike the finely polished points on the other, straighter weapons. But this was one he was reserving for a special purpose.

He gathered his belongings and resumed his journey.

Every hour or so, as he guessed time, he climbed up a tree and looked about the forest for smoke or other signs of Nizin’s whereabouts.

The great station cylinder turned relentlessly, as it had for eons, and life in its surface was calm and pleasant. If there had ever been large animals, they had surely been hunted to extinction. By now, Alex had learned that the loud honking noise that had frightened him and Maryan early on was made by one of the world’s largest birds. It was a kind of crow, with shiny black feathers and fierce yellowish eyes. It had no predators larger than itself to fear, except an occasional LooWoo! hunting party, and so it imperiously issued its mating and warning calls at the top of its lungs. This amused Alex as he quickly fell back into the hunter-gatherer life style he’d learned on Earth. He quickly adapted to life on this miniature world, and might have existed here quite happily but for two things—the loss of his beloved mate, and his hatred for the creature who had killed her and his burning desire for revenge.

Moving quietly in circuitous paths, eating bugs and plants, not making fires or disturbing nesting birds so they made unusual noises, Alex traveled over a good part of the round-world. Days passed, and he did not count them.

One day, climbing a high tree on a hill, he looked out over several miles. He could see almost to the base of the vast gray wall separating the ancient city from its agricultural lands. Looking down about a quarter mile toward an exposed shred of riverbank among thick trees, he spied his nemesis sitting on a log working on something—probably skinning a small animal he’d caught.

Almost as if by telepathy, Nizin turned and looked over his shoulder. Over one arm clearly visible was a LooWoo! head that he was draining, and his face had that startled, frightful Siirk hiss at being disturbed. Alex felt goose bumps running up and down his back, and he nearly slipped from his perch amid waxy leaves on a slippery limb. Nizin’s mouth was dark with blood and gore. His eyes were dark caves. A second later, Nizin turned back to his feast, and Alex sat transfixed.

Nizin turned his head once more—just a flash—and it appeared he might be grinning.

Or was it just another look for more assurance?

Alex wondered if Nizin might be baiting him. He would put nothing past the Siirk. If he knew anything about the Siirk by now, Nizin was planning to make himself the ruler of this world. Having survived his unplanned and unceremonious arrival from Earth, Nizin was doing what came natural to his kind. This unstoppable predator had most likely been trailing him and Maryan since early on their arrival. Nizin had deliberated carefully before picking the spot where he’d assailed Maryan. Now the game was on, and it would play out a bit differently. Maybe Nizin spent a great deal of time looking over his shoulder.

Alex scrambled down the tree and headed across the forest floor toward the Siirk. Up, down, across ferns waving gently in dappled sunlight, over clearings bright with flowers in bluish-white light, Alex fleeted on silent feet with all the skill he’d learned as a woodsman.

Not long after, Alex crept up on a high boulder and peered down at the riverbank. He was close enough now to see the whorls in the bark of the tree trunk on which Nizin had sat. Alex could see the blackish-gray remains of a still smoldering fire now partially covered with sand. The partial covering tipped him again: Nizin was trying to draw him in. Nizin could better have hidden his tracks.

Alex sniffed the air cautiously. He caught a whiff of smoke. He smelled flowers and vegetation. He heard the murmur of water and the tinkle of tiny waves breaking on a wash of rocks in a broad, shallow forest stream. He had a fairly good memory of the sharp, sour body smell of the Siirk, and he did not sense any such odor around him now.

Alex took the special arrow from his quiver and regarded it with pain and anger. If it were not for this object in his hand, this roughly cut sapling with a stone wedged in one end and wrapped in leather, Maryan would be alive and beside him right now. He knotted his fist around the shaft until his fist turned white and the shaft quivered on the verge of breaking. Then he put the arrow back in its quiver.

Alex scouted carefully in all directions from his high lair but could find no sign of Nizin. He wasn’t surprised. As he scrambled down the hill, he thought about himself and Nizin. Now they had something in common: a will to kill. Beyond that, Alex realized he himself had lost something. He had lost either the fear of death or the will to live or both. When that arrow had pierced his beloved woman, the arrow had killed both of them. It remained to be seen if that fearlessness would be an asset or a liability in his drive to rid the universe of Nizin.

Alex was sweaty by the time he got to the bottom of the hill, sliding in thick soil up to his ankles. He stopped to listen. There was a wealth of subtle sounds and smells that signaled normalcy. If Nizin were stalking him, which he did not doubt he would if he wasn’t already, hopefully he would smell or hear Nizin before his opponent could gain the advantage on him. Ultimately, if he did not finish the Siirk, he would become the problem of Tzoofaa’s people. Kind as they were, Alex had no doubt they would find some effective way to deal with Nizin. Meanwhile, Alex knew what he must do.

He approached the riverbank carefully. All was peaceful, and there was neither a sound nor scent of Nizin. Birds fluttered about, and insects fished in the ripples on the little river. The animals scattered when Alex drew near, and then it always got quiet in that small vicinity until he disturbed the next little dip or hollow along the water.

Alex found what he was looking for. Several of Nizin’s footprints were in the water, and Alex knelt nearby to figure out what they meant. Best he could figure, Nizin was walking in six inch deep water along the riverbank and dragging a broken, leafy branch to disguise his passage. He’d stirred up mud in doing so, and missed wiping out a few stray prints. They pointed in a direction that Alex would now follow.

They pointed toward the great wall.