“Not surprising,” he said. “Once their naderers go, they do the damnedest things. But you were carrying something you didn’t have before. Did it actually fill an order properly before it ruined your bike?”
“Someone else’s order,” Pete said. “Its delivery sequence is off, too.”
“What are you going to do with all that lube?”
“I am taking it to a man who probably needs it,” Pete said, recalling the C’s statement that the hunter was after Tibor. Easily a piece of misinformation. Still…
He stuffed his mouth to avoid answering anything further without at least a ten-second pause for thought.
Why would he be looking for Tibor, though? he wondered. What could he want of him? What would make Tibor worth hunting? To anyone else, that is… ?
When they finished eating, Pete knew that he should offer the man one of his remaining cigarettes. He did so, and he took one for himself. They lit them with a brand from the fire and sprawled then near the boulders, resting, smoking.
“I don’t know,” Pete said, “about the propriety of the question. So please excuse me if I am being impolite. I don’t meet so many hunters that I am up on the etiquette. I was just wondering: Are you hunting anything or anyone in particular just now, or are you—between hunts?”
“Oh, I’m on a hunt all right,” the man said. “I’m looking for a little phocomelus named Tibor McMasters. I think the trail is fairly warm now, too.”
“Oh, really?” said Pete, drawing on his cigarette, one hand beneath his head, his eyes on the stars. “What did he do?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing yet. He is not especially important. Just part of a bigger design.”
“Oh.” Now what do I say? he wondered. Then, “By the way, my name is Pete. Pete Sands.”
“I know.”
“I forgot to introduce myself earlier, and—You know? How could you?”
“Because I know of everyone in Charlottesville, Utah—everyone with any connection with Tibor McMasters, that is. It’s a small town. There aren’t that many of you.”
“Efficient,” Pete said, feeling as if barbs inserted painlessly into his flesh were now being drawn. “Your employer must have gone to a lot of trouble and expense. It would have been easier to approach the man back in town.”
“But fruitless, there,” the other replied. “And the difficulty and the cost mean nothing to my employer.”
Pete waited, smoking. He felt positive that it would be a breach of etiquette to inquire as to his employer’s identity. Perhaps if I just wait he will volunteer it, he decided.
The fire crackled. In the distance, something howled and something else chuckled.
“My name is Schuld, Jack Schuld,” the hunter said, extending his hand.
Pete turned onto his side and clasped it. The grip was, as he suspected, powerful enough to crush his own, while sufficiently controlled to show this without exerting considerable force. Releasing it, Pete leaned back and contemplated stellar geometries. A meteor smeared white fire across the sky.
“Tibor is on a dangerous Pilg,” Schuld said, “and he has recently expressed a desire to convert to the religion wherein you would take your ministry.”
“You are indeed thorough,” Pete observed.
“Yes, I’d say so. You Christians aren’t doing so well these days,” he continued, “and even a single convert comes to mean a lot in a little place like Charlottesville, Utah. Right?”
“I can’t deny it,” Pete said.
“So your superior has sent you to take care of the catechumen, to see that he comes to no harm while finishing his job for the competition.”
“I do want to find him and protect him,” Pete said.
“And the subject of his search? Have you any curiosity concerning the one he has been commissioned to portray?”
“Oh, I sometimes wonder whether the man is still really living,” Pete said.
“Man?” Schuld said. “You can still call him that?”
“Well, unlike our competitors, I do not really see him as fitted for any larger role.”
“I was not talking theology,” Schuld said. “I was simply noting your reference to humanity when speaking of one who has forfeited all right to any human considerations. Adolph Eichmann was an altar boy by comparison. We are speaking of the beast who destroyed most of the world.”
“I cannot deny the act, but neither can I judge it. How can I know his motives, his intent?”
“Look, around you. Anytime. Anywhere. Their effects are manifest in every phase of existence now. He is, to put it bluntly and concisely, an inhuman monster.”
Pete nodded.
“Maybe,” he said. “If he truly understood the nature and quality of his actions, then I suppose he was something unspeakable at the time.”
“Try Carleton Lufteufel. It can be spoken. There is not a living creature on Earth today that has not known pain because of him. There is nothing to which he does not owe a sea of misery, a continent of despair. He has been marked from the day he made his decision.”
“I had heard that hunters were mercenaries, that they do not act out of conviction.”
“You anticipate me, Pete. I have not named him as my quarry.”
Pete chuckled. So did Schuld.
“But they are fortunate times, when desire and circumstance are conjoined,” Schuld finally said.
“Then why do you seek Tibor?” Pete asked. “I do not quite understand the connection.”
“The beast is wary,” the other replied, “but I doubt his suspicions would extend to a phocomelus.”
“I begin to see.”
“Yes. I will lead him to him. Tibor can have his likeness. I will have his flesh.”
Pete shuddered. The situation had twisted and darkened, but might, for all that, be turning to his advantage.
“Are you planning to make a quick, clean thing of it?” he asked.
“No,” Schuld replied. “I am charged to make certain that it is just the opposite. I am, you see, employed by a worldwide secret police organization which has been searching for Lufteufel for years—for just this purpose.”
“I understand,” Pete said. “I can almost wish that I did not know this. Almost…”
“I am telling you this because it will make it easier for me if one of you knows. As for Tibor, he has been a member of the Servants of Wrath, and its symbols may still have some hold over him. You, on the other hand, represent the opposing camp. Do you see what I mean?”
“You mean, will I cooperate?”
“Yes. Will you?”
“I do not think myself capable of stopping a person such as you.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“I know.” Damn it! I wish I could talk to Abernathy right now, he thought. But there is no way to get off the call. But he would not give me a real answer. I have to decide this one for myself. Tibor must not be permitted to meet Lufteufel. There ought to be a way. I will have time to find a way—and then let Schuld do the job for me. There is nothing else for me to say now, but, “All right, Jack. I’ll cooperate.”
“Good,” Schuld replied. “I knew that you would.” He felt that powerful hand clasp his shoulder for an instant. In that same instant he felt hemmed in by the stone and the stars.
Fifteen
Into the world, the day, spilling: here: the queries of birds, tentative, then self-assured: here: dew like breath on glass, retreating, gone: here: bands of color that flee the east, fading, fading, blue: here: like a wax doll, half melted: Tibor, soft in the collapsed cart; cock-eared hound by his side, watching the world come around.
A yawn then, a blinking, slow memory. Tibor bunched and relaxed his shoulder muscles. Isometrics. Stretching. Bunching. Relaxing.
“Good morning, Toby. Another day. This one will tell it, I guess. You
