Without a farewell of any sort, Eisen Zwei turned and stalked back into the Synesthesia Wild. Foliage clattered from the efforts of several Asadi to get out of his way. No one else moved.
Denebola, fat and mocking, crossed a small arc of sky and made haloes dance in a hundred inaccessible grottos of the Wild. An hour had passed, and Eisen Zwei returned! He had simply left the huri to guard his first offering. Yes, first. For the old chieftain had come back with still another carcass slung across his bony shoulders. He set it down beside the first. The huri animated itself just long enough to shift its weight and straddle the two contiguous pieces of meat. Then the old Asadi departed again.
An hour later he returned with a third piece of meat – but this time he entered the clearing from the west, about twenty meters up from my lean-to. I realized that he had first entered from the east, then from the south. A pattern is developing, I told myself. Now he’ll depart once more and reenter from the north. Many peoples on Earth ascribe mystical characteristics to the four points of the compass, and I was excited by the possibility of drawing a meaningful analogy.
But Eisen Zwei remained on the assembly floor, shattering my hopes. (In fact, as on my 22nd night in the Wild, he still has not left. Under the copper-green glow of Melchior the old chieftain and his huri squat on the blood-dampened ground waiting for the dawn’s first spiderwebbings of light.) Instead, he made one complete circuit around the clearing, walking counterclockwise from his point of entrance. The huri did not move.
This done, Eisen Zwei rejoined his familiar at midfield.
Here, the second stage of this new and puzzling ritual commenced. Without unloosening the third carcass from his back, E.Z. bent and picked up the huri and put it on his shoulder. Kneeling, he tied straps through the two pieces of meat over which the huri had kept watch. Next, he began to drag these marbled chunks of brown and red through the dirt. He dragged the first into the southern half of the clearing, unslipped the strap by which he had pulled it, and set the huri down once more as his guardian. This procedure he duplicated in the northern half of the clearing, except that here he necessarily stood guard over the second offering himself. The final carcass he still bore on his back.
Eisen Zwei stepped away from the second offering. Deep in his throat he made a noise that sounded like a human being trying to fight down a sob. This noise, I suppose I should add, is the first and so far the only example of voiced communication, discounting vague growls and involuntary moans, I’ve heard among the Asadi. The huri responded to Eisen Zwei’s plaintive ‘sobs’ – undoubtedly a signal – by hopping off the object of its guardianship and then scrabbling miserably through the dust toward the old man, its rubbery wings dipping and twisting. (I’ve almost decided the huri is incapable of flight. Perhaps its wings represent an anatomical holdover from an earlier stage of its evolution.) When both E.Z. and his wretched huri had reached their sacred patch of ground at midfield, the old man picked up the beast and let it close its tiny hands over his discolored mane.
Then the wizened old chieftain extended his arms, tilted his head back, and, staring directly at the sun, made a shuddering inhalation of such piteous depth it seemed either his lungs would burst or his heart break. The clearing echoed with his sob.
At once, the Asadi poured out of their hiding places onto the assembly ground – not simply the adult males, but individuals of every sex and age. Even now, however, in the midst of this lunging riot, the population of the clearing divided into two groups, each one scrimmaging furiously, intramurally, in its own cramped plot of earth. Manes tossed, and eyes pinwheeled with inarticulate color. The hunger of the Asadi made low sad music over the Wild, like summer thunder.
Slashing at and sometimes half maiming one another, the Asadi quickly devoured the two carcasses. Like piranhas, I thought.
Then E.Z., inhaling mightily, moaned again, and the confusion ceased. Every lean grey snout turned toward him. The dying went off to die alone, if any were in fact at the point of death. I saw no one depart, but neither did I see anyone lying helplessly injured in the dirt. The Asadi waited. The Bachelor and I waited.
The third and final act of today’s baroque ritual: Eisen Zwei lowered the last carcass from his back, sat down beside it, and, in full view of his bemused tribespeople, ate the monstrous thing piece by piece. He gave the huri nothing, and the huri, inert but clinging, did not protest this selfish oversight. Meanwhile, terribly slowly, Eisen Zwei ate.
Eventually I retired to the shade of my lean-to, emerging at fairly frequent intervals to check the goings-on in the clearing. By the second hour the Asadi had begun to move about within their separate territories. By the third hour these territories had merged, making it impossible to distinguish the two distinct ‘teams’ of previous days. The old pattern of Indifferent Togetherness had reasserted itself, except that now the Asadi moved with incredible sluggishness, suspiciously eyeing their chieftain and refusing to encroach on the unmarked circle containing him.
I noticed that The Bachelor had come down out of his tree, but I was unable to find him in the clearing. All I saw was E.Z., isolated by a revolving barricade of legs, peeling away the last oily strips of meat from his dinner
