When he came to a comparatively flat place, he beached the boat, got out, and shoved it away with an oar, after which he threw the oar into the water and plunged into the forest preserve of the state of New Jersey. The upper third had been set aside as a national park, and there were perhaps a hundred thousand people in the whole area. Seven hundred thousand counting all seven days’ populations. These would be mostly forest rangers, zoologists, botanists, genetic engineers, organics, trades- and service-people, and their families. There were some farmers, here and there, though these lived close to the villages.
Now that the clouds were gone and the thunder and lightning had ceased, the monitor satellites would have a clear view. Not of him, though, as long as he stayed under the trees. These dripped cold water on him, and the bushes and the rising and lowering of the ground hindered fast walking. After some blundering around in the dark and scratching his face and hands on thorns and bark, he found an overhang of rock. He crawled as far back under it as he could and slept badly, waking often, shivering. Dawn found him also hungry.
He left the shelter and went southward, or toward what he thought was the south. For the first time, he thought of the chance that he might starve. He was a city man and knew nothing of wilderness survival techniques.
By the time that he could see the midmorn sun through openings between trees, he was warm. That helped him feel better somewhat, but his hunger and tiredness more than canceled that. He decided that he should go eastward toward the coast. That increased the chance that the organics might see him. On the other hand, he might find a village or a farm and be able to steal food.
Ten minutes later, he flattened against a tree. Something green had moved across a gap between two trees, green against the blue sky and the darker green of the leaves. Though he had only glimpsed it out of the corner of his eye, he thought that it had to be an organic aircraft. It made no sound, and the occupants would be listening to very sensitive sound detectors and watching the monitor screens of their infrared detectors. They would also be using a dogsnose machine, a device that could detect one out of a million molecules flying off a human body.
The craft had been moving eastward. It was probably making large circles and was probably in communication with other nearby organic vessels. This manhunt would be far larger and more determined than most. He did not know why he was so very important, but his sessions with the psychicist had convinced him that the government considered him to be so.
He slid around the trunk of the tree to keep it between him and the searchers. He did so very quietly. The directional sound detectors would have to be zeroed in at the narrow area he occupied. And there were numerous bird calls interfering with the sound reception.
He jumped, slightly startled, when a crashing noise came from behind him. He turned. Had the organics landed and were they now coming after him? His heart beat hard. Then he forced himself to relax a little. They wouldn’t be making that much noise. Something big and careless was moving through the forest. A moment later, he saw it, though briefly. It was a huge black bear ambling, swaggering rather, unafraid of anything. The beast showed on top of a hill a hundred feet from where Duncan stood. Then it was gone, concealed by the heavy vegetation.
He hoped that the organics had identified it and were moving on to another area. Anyway, he was going to follow it. Maybe the hunters would think that he was another bear.
He had just stepped out from behind the tree when he saw, again out of the corner of his eye, the green bulk overhead in the gap. He moved back quickly, clung to the trunk, and peered around it. The craft had stopped, and he could see its long needlelike shape and the two men sitting in it. It looked much like an Eskimo kayak except that the cockpits were larger and much more open. Seeing the emblem on the fuselage, he sighed with relief. It bore the brown symbol of the forest preserve department, the ranger’s hat, Smokey Bear’s, used by all the days. The two were probably tracking the bear through the transmitter attached to its collar. He had not seen the collar, but he understood that at least half the bears in the area had been anesthetized and then fitted with a collar and transmitter.
That did not mean that these two were not dangerous to him. The organics had undoubtedly radioed the rangers and told them to be on the lookout for him. It was even possible that they had been drafted to join the search.
His sigh of relief was followed by a sigh of anxiety.
Then he felt better. The vessel was moving away.
He did not move away from the tree at once. It was possible that their instruments had shown some body heat’ even though he was behind the tree. They might be pretending to go on but actually hoping they could draw out whomever or whatever was behind the tree.
He counted sixty seconds and walked toward the hill. He still was going to track the bear. Bears were always hungry and knew where to go to find food. He was even hungrier than the bear and did not mind sitting down to lunch with it. As long as he did not sit near it.
When he reached the top of the hill, he found a pool of rain water in a depression in the ground. He drank deeply from it before continuing the trail. That was not hard for even a city dweller to follow. There were, here and there, pawprints in the mud and bent bushes or pieces of fur caught on thorns. Duncan envied the bear. It did not care whether or not anyone knew it was here; it did not worry about being caught. It cut a swath through the woods as if it owned it. Which, in a sense, it did.
The bear had gone over the hill and down a rather rugged slope. Duncan kept from falling by hanging on to bushes or bracing himself against trees. Near the bottom was a wide creek, and beyond that was a steep bank that gave to a wide meadow slanting upward. Duncan stopped halfway down the hill when he saw that the ranger craft was hanging about fifty feet above and to one side of the bear. One of the occupants was photographing the bear with a small camera.
Duncan waited behind the tree, drawing his head all the way behind the tree when the camera swung toward the hill. The bear was standing almost body-deep in the water near the shore and was watching the water intently. Suddenly, its right foreleg moved, and a fish, caught by the paw, rocketed out of the creek and landed on the shore. Making piglike noises, the bear waded out of the water and began eating the fish. It was sizable, perhaps a foot long. No fisher, Duncan did not know what species the fish was, but he was sure that it was very edible. Just now, he felt that he could eat it raw.
Having devoured its prey, the bear went back into the water. Five minutes passed while the bear and Duncan did not move. Now and then, the cameraman would sweep the forest. He would stop sometimes, perhaps to zoom in on a bird. Two antlerless deer came down to the stream about fifty yards to the south. After eyeing the bear, they drank daintily and then disappeared into the greenery.
Venison would be a better meal, Duncan thought. However, he did not have a knife. In any event, he doubted he could ever get close enough to a deer to use even a club.
Presently, another fish was scooped out of the creek and was flopping on the shore. After eating that, the bear ambled across the water, swimming at one point for about ten feet. It walked slowly out of the water, its black fur clinging to the skin, shook itself, drops flying like pearls in the sunshine, and then it veered to the left into the bushes. The ranger vessel turned and flew northward.
Duncan knew that a monitor satellite had its cameras pointed at this area. Anyone in the open would have been photographed and the pictures transmitted to the organic headquarters in Manhattan and in the state capital of New Jersey.
Duncan wanted to cross the creek. He had no intention of doing so unless he could find a place where he could make the transit under thick cover. He went back under the large trees and made his way slowly through the bushes and brambles. Following alongside the creek, he walked uphill and down for approximately five miles. He heard many birds, saw some, and also glimpsed a few animals, a raccoon, a red fox, something gray that disappeared quickly, and a large rabbit that watched him, its nose wig
gling, until he was about thirty feet away, then hopped into the bushes.
He thirsted, yet he could not drink. Nowhere was there enough leafy overhead for him to get to the creek without being observed. A satellite straight above him might not photograph him, but the swarm poised above the atmosphere would have some placed so that they would take angle shots. It would make no difference if he crawled out and kept his head down. Anyone unidentified would bring the organics, the “ganks,” to the location shown.
His belly was rumbling with hunger, and he felt slightly lightheaded. He was sweating even in the comparative cool of the shade. His mouth was dry, and the pebble he was sucking did not bring forth saliva after the first few minutes.
Perhaps they might find him someday, but he would be bones gnawed and scattered by the beasts.
When he saw, through a small opening in the branches, that the sun was at its zenith, he sat down with his back against the trunk of a huge sycamore. He closed his eyes to think about his situation, to consider any way of getting to the creek that he might have overlooked. When he awoke with a start, the sun was no longer shining straight down. He rose, his body and legs stiff, and walked on. After a while, he saw the sun again. At least two hours had passed since he had leaned against the tree. He did not feel rested, and his body lusted for water.
Just as he was thinking about getting a drink and to hell with the consequences, he heard something that made him stop in midstride. It was a low rumbling, no, a deep droning. It sounded like a dynamo, a rapidly rotating generator of electricity, in the distance.
Whatever was making the sound, it had to be a machine. No animal, as far as he knew, would utter such a sound. However, there were some strange beasts in the preserve, products of genetic engineer-biologists. In any event, he was not going to ignore it. His curiosity was too much for him, even though the noise might come from something dangerous to him.
He slipped from tree to tree, moving slowly so that he would not make a loud noise in the bush. The humming or droning came from the northeast and away from the creek. Presently, it became so loud that he was sure that he was near its source. When he looked around the side of a great cottonwood, he was surprised. The dynamolike sound did not come from a machine but from the rapidly moving lips of a man. He was seated cross-legged under the branches of a tremendous oak.
He was naked and rather fat, big-paunched. His skin was a light brown; his head, large and round. The broad cheekbones were topped by slightly Mongolian eyes. His hair was black and fell behind his back and over his shoulders. He was staring straight ahead, but if he saw Duncan’s head he gave no sign of awareness.
Duncan stepped back behind the tree and listened. After a few seconds, he recognized the content of the droning. “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo!” Over and over, so swiftly that only someone who had heard it before would know what he was saying. The man was uttering the phrase which the Nichirenites, a Buddhist sect, chanted to put themselves into phase with the Buddhahead. The phrase ensured good karmic cause and got rid of the bad karma.
Or so Duncan remembered, though he did not know where he had gotten this information.
However, though the huge man’s hands were held together, palm to palm, opposite the chest, a large crucifix dangled from the string of beads attached to it. He wore necklaces from which were suspended a seal of Solomon, a crescent, a tiny African idol, a four-leaved clover, a four-armed, fierce-faced figurine, and a symbolic eye on top of a pyramid. Jewish, Muslim, Voodoo, Irish, Hindu and Freemasonic.
The droning ceased. A few seconds passed. Then the man began chanting in Latin, a language Duncan recognized though he could not read or speak it. Duncan eased down behind the tree and listened. He also considered the implications of this man’s presence and his exotic garb, or lack of it, and his behavior. Whoever or whatever he was, he was not a gank or ranger. Those professions were barred to the religious. The government did not prohibit the worship of any deity, but it certainly did not encourage it, and it did make it difficult for those who followed any religion.
The man could be a worker of some sort, perhaps on a nearby farm or ranger or biological station. He might have sneaked away to practice his obviously rather eclectic faith.
After a while, the Latin chant was succeeded by a Hebrew chant. And then, while Duncan grew thirstier, hungrier, and more impatient, and also angered at some large flies that bit him savagely, he heard’ a different sort of chant. It sounded somewhat like the Hebrew but was throatier and harsher. That must be Arabic.
“To hell with this!” Duncan muttered. He rose and walked around the tree trunk. There was a slight pause in the chanting when the man saw him, but it picked up again. He kept his gaze on Duncan.
Duncan stopped a few feet in front of the man and looked down at him. In turn, the chanter fixed his eyes on the area of Duncan’s navel. Duncan inspected the man, his hugeness, the folds of fat around his middle, the sweat filming the brown skin, the hairless chest, breasts which were large enough to be a woman’s, the bulging belly with a glinting jewel stuck in the bellybutton, the enormous penis, the dirty feet, the pale green eyes, surprising in so dark a man, the slight epicanthic folds, the long thin nose, slightly bent at the end, the hairy ears, the redness under the black of hair when a sun ray suddenly struck through the gap overhead.
Suddenly, the man raised his right hand from the beads holding the crucifix and gestured swiftly to the base of a cottonwood about forty feet away.
Weirdness in the wilds of New Jersey, Duncan thought. He walked to the tree indicated while the man changed his Arabic to some language Duncan did not know but suspected was West African. In which case, it would be Swahili, the tongue all subequatorial Africans now spoke.
3
By the side of a half-exposed tree root was an area of loose dirt. Duncan dug the clods aside with his fingers and revealed the side of a canvas bag. He lifted the heavy container, opened the flap at the top, put his hand in, and felt a smooth cold vessel. It was a metal canteen, which he did not hesitate to open. After all, the man had in one gesture told him to be his guest. The only trouble was that, when the cap came off, Duncan smelled whiskey, not the water he had hoped for. He groped around in the bag for another canteen, found none, and drank. He had to have some kind of fluid.
Great God!
The liquor burned his dry throat and brought tears that he had thought his dehydrated body could not give. But it also gave him a sense of not caring and a giddy optimism. And then a desire for water twice what he had had a second before.
A smaller bag offered him cheese, onions, and bread. He ate half of all but the onions, hoping that he was not abusing the man’s hospitality by so doing. The food eased the choke of whiskey and shrank the hollow in his stomach. His ache for water was even stronger.
He turned, and the man, still not looking at him, took his hand from the beads and finger-stabbed at somewhere past the tree. Duncan, dazed though wondering why he was so obedient, walked past the tree. After wading through some waist-high bushes and being raked by thorns, he came close to the edge of the creek. Here was an opportunity that he would not have seen if he had kept to his original course. A great tree growing close to the bank had been uprooted and was lying across the stream. Here was a bridge above which arched other branches, which formed a canopy. Here was the place for which he had been looking all day. He smiled, threw up his hands, croaked, “Ah! Thank God!” and got down on all fours. Crawling, he went down the sloping bank by the northern side of the many-rooted trunk and into the water. He drank greedily at first, then forced himself to stop. After a few more sips and submerging himself to the waist in the cold water, he crawled back into the forest.
Coming into sight of the man—the chant was now in another language—he stopped. A chill not caused by his recent dip rippled over his skin; an icicle formed on the eaves of his belly. Sitting on top of the man’s head was a male cardinal, a feathered clot of blood. It darted glances around, then flew off. Immediately after
that, a male deer walked into view, stopped, saw Duncan, but did not run away. It trotted up to the man, poked its wet black nose into the man’s ear, licked his face once, and then bounded away.
What have we here? Duncan thought. A latter-day Saint Francis of Assisi?
The man, who had been chanting in some harsh language, suddenly became silent. He dropped the crucifix, which swung slightly back and forth, slipping on the thick sweat over his chest, then stopped. After crossing himself, he stood up. Reared, that is, his body seeming to rise and rise like a creature from the black lagoon films. Fully erect, he was at least eight feet tall, making Duncan’s six foot seven inches pygmyish. Weighs 450 or more pounds, Duncan thought. A monster. A lion of a man. The behemoth and bull of the woods.
“Can you hear the music of the trees?” the man said in the deepest voice Duncan had ever heard.
“No, can you?” Duncan said. The man was certainly awesome, but Duncan was sagging-tired and his thirst and hunger were still unslaked, and he also was afraid of no man. At least, that was what he was telling himself.
“Certainly,” the man boomed. “At this time of day and with the present weather conditions, it’s in D Major. Allegretto.”
Duncan grinned and said, “Are you always this full of shit?”
“Haw! Haw! Haw! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!”
The laughter was like the bellow of an enraged bear, its effect softened by the big smile. The man held out a hand and enfolded Duncan’s. The grip was strong but not too much. No show of domination here.
“Shake, friend. I surmise you’re a fugitive from what the government calls justice?”
Duncan said, “Yes, I am. And you?”
He felt as if this were unreal. He was on a stage with some very strange sets and an exotic character. He was playing a role without a script, improvising.
What most surprised him was that the man seemed to accept unquestioningly that this stranger was an outlaw on the run. Wasn’t he wondering if he could be an organic pretending to be a fugitive?