‘Incredible,’ Elegy said aloud. ‘Absolutely incredible.’
There was no reason for her to whisper. Each Asadi had but one thing in mind: the procuring of a bit of flesh and its swift, slashing ingestion. To this end, the Asadi tore at one another, kicked, butted heads, clawed, pulled fur, flashed their teeth – all without any accompanying sound but the thunderous grinding of tooth enamel, a vivid, ubiquitous panting, and the thudding of their feet.
The carcasses Kretzoi had dragged into opposite ends of the clearing were gone in a bloody twinkling. Like piranhas, Chaney had written. Well, in six years, that hadn’t changed. None of the Asadi was injured irreparably, it seemed, but many did drag themselves away with broken bones and severely gaping wounds.
Kretzoi signaled a conclusion to the feast by sucking in his breath and calling his subjects to order. They obeyed readily. Even the injured turned their heads toward him. The victors, to whom had gone the spoils, sat back on their haunches and, wiping their muzzles with their hands, gave Kretzoi a keen and critical eye. Of all the milling Asadi, however, only a few had actually been fed.
‘A far cry from loaves and fishes,’ I told Elegy sotto voce. ‘Makes you wonder why they simply don’t make Kretzoi their dessert.’
‘No chance of that, Ben. Watch.’
‘He going to eat the packet on his back? ’S what Eisen Zwei did, I know, but I swear Kretzoi hasn’t got the appetite of that old man.’
‘Shhh.’
Kretzoi did as the script of Chaney’s monograph obliged him to do. He removed the third well-whittled carcass from his shoulders, placed it at his feet, and then sat down behind it to tear off ropy morsels. He ate slowly – but not, I felt sure, merely because Egan Chaney’s script required him to: The heat and his own nervousness made it impossible for him to gulp the over-ample meal. He ate as he had to. And as he ate, the mock-huri clinging to his mane, the Asadi regarded Kretzoi with decorous, respectful envy. The noise of my camera suddenly seemed intrusive.
‘That’s enough, Ben. A few of them seem to be tracking on the whirr. Save some film for later.’
I lowered the camera’s barrel, swung it across my back on its leather sling.
‘Do you see what Kretzoi’s eating, Ben?’
‘Meat – what else?’
‘It’s Cy,’ Elegy whispered. ‘The carcass is small but it’s almost entire. It’s not a beef slab like the others.’
I swung the barrel of my camera around and sighted through the scope of its automatic enlarger. The meat Kretzoi was so soberly devouring was indeed the meat I had rendered that morning from Cy’s corpse – darker in color than the beef, less sinewy, stranger. I returned the camera to my back and looked at Elegy.
‘I don’t understand. This morning Kretzoi gave me the evil eye for ending that poor bugger’s hopeless vegetable existence. Now he’s cannibalizing the remains.’
‘In Bojangles’s stead,’ Elegy told me. ‘Can’t you understand that?’
‘As if Cy were Kretzoi’s meat-sibling? Is that what you mean?’
‘Exactly.’
My back and buttocks aching, I shifted nearer Elegy. ‘I still don’t understand.’
‘Listen, Ben, what Kretzoi’s doing he does because I’ve asked him to. He knew he’d have to down the better part of a good-sized piece of meat as part of his impersonization of Eisen Zwei, but he wasn’t entirely happy with the assignment.’
‘He’s fastidious.’
‘He is, despite your tone. He’s genuinely fastidious. In a way, Ben, you’ve inadvertently made his role in this charade easier for him – he’s reaffirming his bond with Bojangles by eating the dressed-out carcass of Cy. He’s not simply masquerading as an Asadi, he’s not just playing a part – he’s actively identifying with these creatures.’
‘Which is fine. If it doesn’t go too far.’
Elegy framed a contemptuous scowl, then looked back out into the clearing. Only her small, hard profile met my gaze. With the same noncommittal enduring patience as a coat rack holds coats, the lattice-sail tree held Elegy and me. For the next two hours – amazingly enough – we didn’t exchange a single word. During this time Denebola moved into the western half of the sky and Kretzoi finished swallowing all but the gristle and bone of his adopted meat-sibling. Good-bye, Cy, good-bye. I was glad when the feast was over.
Then: ‘Get your camera ready.’
I obeyed, and in the very next moment I was filming. Kretzoi lifted himself sluggishly from the ground and summoned the Asadi to attention by drawing a painful breath. Then he emptied the contents of his stomach in quick, sharp retches – like a slot machine paying out a series of jackpots. The artificial huri wobbled on his shoulder, but didn’t fall. Afterward, dazed, Kretzoi stumbled away a few steps and collapsed into an exhausted crouch.
‘That’s in the script,’ I said, ‘but is it deliberate? Kretzoi’s several days ahead of schedule, isn’t he?’
‘He’s doing his best to accomplish the entire program for us in a single day.’ Elegy’s knuckles were white against the striated, blue-grey bark of the tree.
‘You think this is the beginning of the Ritual of Death and Designation?’
‘Looks like, Ben. Certainly looks like.’
I shifted again, leaning my back into a fan of boughs supporting an especially large reticulate sail, and arranged myself so that I could film without toppling headlong down.
The Asadi, as they had done at Eisen Zwei’s nauseating prompting six years ago, came forward from the clearing’s sidelines, approached Kretzoi in something like homage, and began taking away tiny morsels of regurgitated matter. They did this one after
