‘The strange behavior existed prior to Eisen Zwei’s coming,’ I insisted. ‘You’re ignoring the principal terms of the equation.’
Elegy shrugged.
‘Then what about the huri?’ I asked her.
‘Jaafar,’ she said, glancing at the young man as he wiped his hands down his thighs to clean them of grease, ‘Jaafar, Ben wants to know about our huri. Would you get it, please?’
Jaafar turned and leaped into the Dragonfly. A moment later he was back, carrying a laminated bag in which there appeared to be sleeping the embryo of a crumpled demon.
‘Substitutes for everything,’ said Elegy with broad self-mockery. ‘For Eisen Zwei, for prime cut of Asadi, and now for my daddy’s infamous and maybe even apocryphal huri. Apocryphal, that is, if you listen to skeptics. I don’t, I guess. I wouldn’t be here if I did.’ She unsnapped the bag and withdrew the repellent black folds of the mysterious ‘embryo’ inside it. Then she shook out the folds, pulled a small metal pin at the base of the rubbery pleats, and watched in evident satisfaction as air rushed in to inflate the thing. In a moment she was holding a huri on the palm of her hand, supporting it against her breasts as if it were a hungry demon child. ‘I had this made in Frasierville,’ she told me. ‘Didn’t take ’em too long. They did it from the plans I gave ’em the day after you left the hangar to hole up in your private, dry-docked garbage scow.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Just who did it for you?’
‘A pair of workers at the civki synthetics plant. Governor Eisen intervened for us again, you see.’ The artificial huri had serrated wings, henlike feet, and a face that was featureless except for the lip- or beak-resembling prominences surrounding its predatory mouth. ‘Puncture-proof, Ben, and the claws are made to grasp.’ She approached Kretzoi and affixed the mock-huri to his right shoulder, bending the vulcanized claws so that they clung tenaciously. ‘It won’t fly, I’m afraid – but we’ll have to live with that. My father’s monograph indicates that in the clearing the huri seldom did anything but ride Eisen Zwei’s shoulder or squat insentiently wherever it was placed.’
Kretzoi pulled his head as far to the left as he could, eyeing the little hitchhiker with distaste. I didn’t much blame him, either. Eventually, he assumed a baboonish sitting posture, shut his eyes, and tried to pretend that the thing enthroned on his shoulder didn’t exist.
‘The Asadi “teams” will take care of themselves once Kretzoi gets in there,’ Elegy assured me. ‘Wait and see. They probably simply consist of a number of Asadi mothers and several of their designated-survivor children. A daylight manifestation of the nest bond. Really, what so excites and flusters them is their anticipation of a chance to eat meat in the clearing in broad daylight.’
‘That still doesn’t explain why some mothers go to one side, Elegy, and some to the other.’
She ignored this. ‘Jaafar, we’ve got to get moving. Expect us back in about thirty minutes for a second piece of meat – or Kretzoi, anyway.’
Jaafar nodded obediently and climbed into the cockpit of the BenDragon Prime. Elegy and I helped each other secure our equipment, including our transceivers and one bulky but lightweight holocamera. Then Elegy chucked Kretzoi tenderly under the chin, reviving him to the business of the day, and the three of us set off together toward the Asadi clearing.
Kretzoi entered from the east, only a little over an hour after the Asadi had gathered there that morning. We were very careful about both the time and the direction of his entry.
Once he had gone in, Elegy and I stayed well back from the clearing’s eastern boundary. However, we chose a spot permitting us only a partially obstructed view into the very center of the assembly ground, where we believed Kretzoi would have to play out the greatest portion of his role as a second Eisen Zwei. I got my camera pointed through a narrow tunnel in the vegetation and rocked back on my heels waiting for the show to begin. Both Elegy and I hoped that Kretzoi’s appearance among the Asadi would divert their attention from our ill-concealed presence nearby. Which, thank God, it unquestionably did.
At first the milling Asadi seemed unaware that something unusual had happened. All I could see through the sight of my sleek tubular camera was their marching bodies, dusty manes, and bobbing snouts, for Kretzoi disappeared into their midst like a diver into dark water, and I feared that he would fail to resurface.
‘Where is he?’ Elegy whispered, straining forward at my side, but in a moment she had her answer.
Kretzoi was apparently plodding out a circuit contrary to those of the Asadi themselves. This circuit, along with the huri on his shoulder and the packet of thawing meat on his back, soon made the Asadi aware that someone unusual had just crashed their party. Almost as a single being, then, they withdrew from the middle of the field, leaving Kretzoi plainly visible there. Soon, in fact, they lined the perimeters of the clearing.
I aimed my camera into the heart of the assembly ground. Its whirring attracted no attention. The Asadi were too busy gaping at Kretzoi to mount charging displays on the alien technological artifact recording their behavior.
Swaggering, employing a gait halfway between bipedalism and primate knuckle walking, Kretzoi entered the Center Ring and undid the buckle securing the meat to his left shoulder. Then he swung the packet free and set it on the ground.
The sight of the meat emboldened the Asadi. They began edging inward toward it – but as soon as they did, Kretzoi hunkered down, removed the mock-huri from his shoulder, and set the rubber beastie atop the meat. For a moment he had to struggle to keep it from toppling over – but at last he got the huri to stand on its own, its claws buried like fork prongs in
