Harris stood behind a small spruce a few feet away. 'Isn't that something. Isn't that something?' he said, his words more prosaic than his friend's, but his tone hardly less reverent.
Eight honkers grazed there, pulling up grass with their bills: two males, Audubon judged, and half a dozen smaller females. The birds had a more forward-leaning posture than did the mounted skeletons in the Hanover museum. That meant they weren't so tall. The males probably could stretch their heads up higher than a man, but it wouldn't be easy or comfortable for them.
And then they both moved toward the same female, and did stretch their necks up and up and up, and honked as loudly as ever they could, and flapped their tiny, useless wings to make themselves seem big and fierce. And, while they squabbled, the female walked away.
Audubon started sketching. He didn't know how many of the sketches he would work up into paintings and how many would become woodcuts or lithographs. He didn't care, either. He was sketching honkers from life, and if that wasn't heaven it was the next best thing.
'Which species are they, do you suppose?' Harris asked.
Once, at least a dozen varieties of honker had roamed Atlantis' plains and uplands. The largest couple of species, the so-called great honkers, birds of the easily accessible eastern lowlands, went extinct first. Audubon had studied the remains in Hanover and elsewhere to be ready for this day. Now it was here, and he still found himself unsure. 'I… believe they're what's called the agile honker,' he said slowly. 'Those are the specimens they most resemble.'
'If you say they're agile honkers, why then, they are,' Harris said. 'Anyone who thinks otherwise will have to change his mind, because you've got the creatures.'
'I want to be right.' But Audubon couldn't deny his friend had a point. 'A shame to have to take a specimen, but…'
'It'll feed us for a while, too.' The prospect didn't bother Harris. 'They are supposed to be good eating.'
'True enough.' When Audubon had all the sketches he wanted of grazing honkers and of bad-tempered males displaying, he stepped out from behind the cy-cad. The birds stared at him in mild surprise. Then they walked away. He was something strange, but they didn't think he was particularly dangerous. Atlantean creatures had no innate fear of man. The lack cost them dearly.
He walked after them, and they withdrew again. Harris came out, too, which likely didn't help. Audubon held up a hand. 'Stay there, Edward. I'll lure them back.'
Setting down his shotgun, he lay on his back in the sweet-smelling grass, raised his hips, and pumped his legs in the air, first one, then the other, again and again, faster and faster. He'd made pronghorn antelope on the Terranovan prairie curious enough to approach with that trick. What worked with the wary antelope should work for agile honkers as well. 'Are they coming?' he asked.
'They sure are.' Harris chuckled. 'You look like a damn fool-you know that?'
'So what?' Audubon went on pumping. Yes, he could hear the honkers drawing near, hear their calls and then hear their big, four-toed feet tramping through the grass.
When he stood up again, he found the bigger male only a few feet away. The honker squalled at him; it didn't care for anything on two legs that was taller than it. 'Going to shoot that one?' Harris asked.
'Yes. Be ready if my charge doesn't bring it down,' Audubon said. Point-blank buckshot should do the job. Sometimes, though, wild creatures were amazingly tenacious of life.
Audubon raised the shotgun. No, the agile honker had no idea what it was. This hardly seemed sporting, but his art and science both required it. He pulled the trigger. The gun kicked against his shoulder. The male let out a last surprised honk and toppled. The rest of the birds ran off-faster than a man, probably as fast as a horse, gabbling as they went.
Harris came up beside Audubon. 'He's down. He won't get up again, either.'
'No.' Audubon wasn't proud of what he'd done. 'And the other male can have all the females now.'
'He ought to thank you, eh?' Harris leered and poked Audubon in the ribs.
'He'd best enjoy them while he can.' Audubon stayed somber. 'Sooner or later-probably sooner-someone else will come along and shoot him, too, and his lady friends with him.'
By then, the rest of the honkers had gone perhaps a hundred yards. When no more unexpected thunder boomed, they settled down and started grazing again. A few minutes later, a hawk soared by overhead-not a red- crested eagle, but an ordinary hawk far too small to harm them: Still, its shadow panicked them more thoroughly than the shotgun blast had. They sprinted for the cover of the trees, honking louder than they did when Audubon fired.
'Would you please bring my wires, Edward?' the artist asked. 'No posing board with a bird this size, but I can truss him up into lifelike postures.'
'I'll be back directly,' Harris said. He took longer than he promised, but only because instead of carrying things himself he led up the pack horses. That gave Audubon not only the wires but also his watercolors and the strong spirits for preserving bits of the agile honker. If he and Harris did what he'd told the customs man they wouldn't do and drank some of the spirits instead of using them all as preservatives… Well, how else could they celebrate?
Audubon soon got to work. 'This may be the last painting I ever do,' he said. 'If it is, I want to give my best.'
'Don't be foolish. You're good for another twenty years, easy,' Harris said.
'I hope you're right.' Audubon left it there. No matter what he hoped, he didn't believe it, however much he wished he did. He went on, 'And this may be the last view of these honkers science ever gets. I owe it to them to give my best, too.'
He wired the dead male's neck and wings into the pose it took when challenging its rival. He had the sketches he'd made from life to help him do that. His heart pounded as he and Harris manhandled the honker. Ten years earlier, or even five, it wouldn't have seemed so hard. No, he didn't think he had twenty more left, or anything close to that.
Live for the moment then, he told himself. It's all there is. His eye still saw; his hand still obeyed. If the rest of him was wearing out like a steamboat that had gone up and down the Big Muddy too many times… then it was. When people remembered him, it would be for what his eye saw and his hand did. The rest? The rest mattered only to him.
And when people remembered agile honkers from now on, that too would be for what his eye saw and what his hand did. Even more than he had with the red-crested eagle, he felt responsibility's weight heavy on his shoulders.
The other honkers came out from the trees and began grazing again. Some of them drew close to where he worked. Their calls when they saw him by the male's body seemed to his ear curious and plaintive. They knew their fellow was dead, but they couldn't understand why Audubon stood near the corpse. Unlike a hawk's shadow, he was no danger they recognized.
The Sun was setting when he looked up from his work. 'I think it may do,' he said. 'The background will wait for later.'
Harris examined the honker on the paper, the honker vibrant with the life Audubon had stolen from its model. He set a hand on the painter's shoulder. 'Congratulations. This one will last forever.'
'Which is more than I will. Which is more than the birds will.' Audubon looked down at the dead honker, agile no more. 'Now for the anatomical specimens, and now for the dark meat. Poor thing, it will be all flyblown by this time tomorrow.' 'But your painting will keep it alive,' Harris said.
'My painting will keep its memory alive. It's not the same.' Audubon thought again about how his heart had beat too hard, beat too fast. It was quieter now, but another twenty years? Not likely. 'No, it's not the same.' He sighed. 'But it's all we have. A great pity, but it is.' He drew his skinning knife. 'And now for the rest of the job…'
Deus Ex Homine by HANNU RAJANIEMI
