Page 18
The sight of heper blood so close, the smel of it rushing into the air, sends the other hunters into hyperdelirium. The screams rip into my ear drums, threatening to shatter them.
Don't cover your ears! Don't cover your ears! I do the only thing I can: I raise my head, look to the raf ters, and scream.
At the pain, at the horror I know is taking place. My scream joins the others around me. For a few moments, it is my scream that fi l s my ears, covers over all the jackal-and hyena- like howls around me. That is all I want. For just a few moments to be free of their screams.
Then, for the fi rst time, the heper makes a sound. A scream, so different from the screams of desire and hunger around it. This is a cry of horror and a burrowed resignation. It haunts me. It is the amplifi cation of what has lived in my own bones for years.
I hear the sound of bone crunched and then snapped.
Gaunt Man has broken one of the heper's legs. He's toying with it, like a cat with an injured mouse, biding his time. And he's doing it to nettle the other hunters as wel , teasing us with the prize that is so out of reach for us but so inevitable for him. The heper crawls now on its two arms and one leg, its left leg dragging in the dirt, its eyes delirious with unimaginable pain.
“Throw me the knife!” Abs shouts. She is looking at Crimson Lips, who has recovered the knife that Gaunt Man tossed away.
Crimson Lips is a blur; nobody's noticed until now that she's been sawing away at the straps.
“Throw me the knife!”
“The knife— listen to me, throw me the knife!” someone else yel s.
Gaunt Man's head snaps up, takes in what is happening.
He can't take his time anymore. Within seconds, Crimson Lips is going to cut through her restraints, will be charging toward the heper.
With a cry of anger, he leaps on the heper and sinks his fangs into the back of its neck.
Abs cuts through her fourth strap; even as it is fal ing away, she is already spinning around, leaping in one cheetahlike pounce to the heper. Her aim is off; she ends up upending Gaunt Man, and the two of them bounce away from the suddenly freed heper.
The heper scuttles on hands and foot, blood trailing behind it, frantical y trying to fi nd the door opening. Its eyes are pools of fevered dread and pain. It is disoriented, blinded by the blood pouring into its eyes. In its confusion, it is coming right at me.
Abs and Gaunt Man are on their feet, pouncing toward the heper. They land on it at exactly the same time, knocking it off its feet. Right into me.
Its head knocks into my shoulder a split second before its body slams into mine. Weirdly, it embraces me, its arms encircling my waist. Instinctual y, my arms swing around its body. I am holding it up, Abs and Gaunt Man right behind it, their nails sinking into its skin, their fangs bared and a second away from slashing downward and into it.
It looks up, and for one dreadful moment, our eyes meet. I wil never know if its eyes suddenly widened because of the fl ood of pain surging through its body or because of recognition. Of another heper.
Eventual y, when it is all over, the hunters are released. A staffer, speaking gravely, instructs us to return to our rooms for the remainder of the night. By then, there is hardly anything left of the heper, just its shredded clothes. Its blood has been licked off where it splattered; even the dirt, coagulated with the heper's spil ed blood, has been dug up, stuffed into mouths, chewed, and sucked on.
My escort is waiting outside the Introduction. “Go put on a change of clothes,” he tel s me, his nostrils twitching. “I smel heper all over you. ”
The openness of the Vast is what I relish. After I climb the endless fl ight of stairs, lagging far behind everyone else, I fi nal y reach the ground fl oor. The others move on up to their quarters. I walk out into the open, the night sky fi l ed with stars. An easterly breeze blows, bil owing my clothes, wafting through my hair. I stagger toward the library, grateful to be able to get away, to be alone. Grains of sand blow against my face, but I barely notice.
Halfway back, I col apse to the ground.
I am so sapped of strength, I can't get up. I lay my head back down on the bricked walkway. It's the lack of water.
My desiccated brain lies shriveled in my skul , a sour plum.
Grayness takes over.
Minutes later— or is it hours?— I come to. I feel better, strength returned to my limbs. The sky is less dark, the stars fewer in num-ber and dimmer. I glance back at the Institute. Nobody has noticed me.
Even though I know it's futile, I do another walk- through the library, hoping to fi nd something to drink. A half hour later, I col apse on the lounge chair, body feeling like a crisp autumn twig, not a molecule of moisture within. My heart hammers away in alarm as if it knows what I'm trying to deny. That my situation is desperate. I won't last another night. They'l come for me after dusk when I don't show up and fi nd me fl opped on the fl oor. It'l be over moments later.
A metal ic click rings through the library, then a soft churning sound. The shutters. Pul ing down darkness, like my eyelids slowly closing. In the blackness, the air grows chil y. My body odor rises to my nose, a sickening stench of heper. I lift my arms, smel my pits.
Ripe. Tomorrow, after the sun sets and the moon rises, I'm a dead man.
A dead heper.
A dead heper.
Images of the heper's death fi l my sleep: feverish reinterpretations, the screams louder, the colors sharper. In my nightmare, the heper leaps into my arms, its blood running over my cheekbones, down my cheeks. In my thirst, my pasty- dried tongue reaches out refl ex-ively, dabbing at the blood. I suck on the blood, letting it soak into my tongue like mountain spring water into a dry sponge, then draw it down my parched throat, feeling its energy ripple through my sapped body. As my body begins to tingle warmer, the heper screams louder— until I realize the scream is coming not from the heper, but from the other hunters, all of them stil tied to their posts, pointing at me, screaming, as I kneel bent over the dead heper in my arms, its skin pasty and blotchy blue.
I shudder awake, the backs of my dry eyelids scraping against my eyebal s.
It is still the middle of the day. The beam of sunlight has returned, streaming across the library again, an il uminated tightrope from one end to the other. It is even brighter and thicker than I remember it.
I'm too tired to do anything but watch it. My thoughts scatter in haphazard, incoherent penumbras. It's all I can do, just mind-lessly watch the beam of light. So I do that, for minutes (hours?).
The beam shifts ever so with the passing time, traveling in a diagonal fashion along the far wal of the library.
Then something interesting happens. As the beam moves along the wal , it suddenly hits something that causes it to bounce off at an angle; the beam is refl ected diagonal y to the adjacent wal . At fi rst, I think it's just my mind playing tricks on me. I blink. It's still there, only more obvious now.
The original beam shooting across to the far wal and now the shorter, refl ected beam, bounced to the right wal .
It's enough to rouse me out of the lounge chair. I make my way to the far wal , my painful knees churning in sockets like cactus scraping on concrete. Where the beam hits the far wal is a smal circular mirror, no bigger than the palm of my hand, nailed to the wal . It is angled slightly, refl ecting the beam off to the side wal .
As I make my way to that side wal , it happens again. That second refl ected beam is in turn refl ected: now there are three sunbeams bouncing around the room. The third beam is weak and momentary. It grows brighter for about ten seconds, then fades. As it does, I hurry to the spot it is shining at, a faint dot of il umination on the spine of a book. I walk over and hook out the book. Feel its leathery feel in my hand, smooth and worn. I carry it to the fi rst beam of sunlight, the second beam itself now fading away. I hold the book to the light, fl ip it around to the front cover.
/> The Heper Hunt, it reads.
Many moons ago, the heper population— which in eras past, according to unsubstantiated theories, once, unfathomably, dominated the land— fel to dangerously low numbers. By Palatial Order 56, hepers were rounded up and farmed on the newly built Heper Institute of Refi ned Research and Discovery. To ap-pease a disgruntled populace, citizens in good standing were randomly chosen to participate in the annual Heper Hunt. It was a resounding success.
The fi rst sign of corruption was seen in the decreasing number of hepers at the annual Hunt. Typical y ranging between twenty and twenty- fi ve hepers, that number soon dwindled down to about fi fteen. Eventual y, only ten hepers were released, then only seven; fi nal y, on a night few have forgotten, the Palace released a statement: There were no more hepers in captivity at the Heper Institute.
And yet. Hushed rumors of secret hunting expeditions per- sisted: clandestine meetings at the Heper Institute for high- ranking Palace offi cials; convoys of carriages arriving there in the last hours of dusk; odd wails heard coming from across the Vast.
Rumors circulated and grew that corruption reached “al the way to the top. ”
But then, after a few years, even those rumors ceased.
On the eleventh day of the sixth month of the fourth year of the 18th Ruler, it was announced that hepers had become extinct.
The journal cover is made of charcoal lambskin mottled with minuscule grooves. It is smooth and broken in, looped by twin twines.
The pages inside, with mercury- gilt edges, crinkle and differentiate easily when I turn them. Thousands of pages of handwritten notes, the penmanship clean and assured. But there's nothing original in these pages.
And, notwithstanding the title on the cover, hardly any material about the Heper Hunt. Only a brief history of the Hunt scrawled on the fi rst couple of pages, then the matter is dropped, like an impulsive manuscript quickly jettisoned.
The remainder of the journal is hand- copied and regurgitated material copied from the thousands of textbooks in the library. Long lists of genealogies; ancient poems; wel - known fables. Even detailed diagrams that must have taken days to copy, meticulously duplicated.
The Scientist. Clearly, he's the author of this journal. But why he spent thousands of hours needlessly fi l ing its pages is a mystery. I remember what others said about him: his mental instability, his mysterious disappearance.