THE GORILLA-LIKE CREATURE WAS, it seemed, even bigger in daylight, the bright, unlikely colors of its face more vivid and full of fire. Its yellow eyes were locked onto me, and it sidled as if tracing a rough circle around me, moving from knuckled fist to knuckled fist, suddenly baring its massive teeth in yawning threat, in case I considered drawing my kukri and taking my chances in a fight.
That would be absurd. The creature would shrug off my attack and hurl me into the audience like a rag doll. If I was lucky. If I was unlucky, it would bite me hard enough in the neck to all but sever my head, or simply take hold of my limbs and pull me apart. The xipuku were not local creatures, being confined to the mountain rain forests in the center of the continent, but they had been a favorite horror story of the Seventh Street gang, who had hoarded the boys’ adventure broadsides they found or stole like they were luxorite. I knew all too well what the beast was capable of.
Keeping the rest of my body as still as I could, I reached for the laces of my right boot and unfastened them without taking my eyes off the almost luminous face of the animal. I gripped the heel and worked my foot out as the xipuku took another long and watchful sidestep. Then the same with the left boot. Then the socks. If I ran, the animal would come after me, would be on me in one leap. So I would do what I had been trained to do, though I had only a slender cord for a stairway. Without breaking the eye lock I had with the xipuku, I moved my left hand around until I brushed against the hanging rope and grabbed it.
I got slowly to my feet, feeling my head swim again, using the rope to haul myself upright. The creature became very still, gauging what I was doing, and it struck me that it was not immune to the effects of the green luxorite above us: its fur looked ragged and patchy, and it was drooling long, phlegmy strings. As it watched me gather the cord around my hands, it swayed as if it felt some of the same dizziness I did, though it was clearly much hardier to have lasted this long already. A man living this close to the source would have been dead by now. None of this made it less dangerous, of course. Maybe the opposite.
Still unsteady, head throbbing and stomach churning, I hooked the first two toes of my right foot around the rope as I had seen the boy do, then lifted my left higher and did the same with that. I took the first “step” up the rope, fighting the way the whole thing began to swing as I clawed for purchase with my toes, conscious also that the xipuku had stopped skirting me and was coming closer. My only option was up.
So I climbed and got another ten feet before my stomach cramped and I vomited again. Instinctively I twisted my head away so that I wouldn’t get it on myself and nearly lost my grip, so that I had to just hold on for a second, knowing that the feeling was getting worse all the time. My only asset was speed, which was the one thing I dared not risk, not up here on a rope, and not with the xipuku prowling below me. At least it couldn’t come up. The cord was too slim for its massive bulk …
But it might pull you down.
The idea stopped me again, and I risked a look. The creature was considering the rope. From here it was all hulking shoulders and a mounded black head, which suddenly twisted up to see me, the red and blue in its face as startling as the makeup of a clown. It stood up, gripping the rope, and for a moment, that movement alone seemed to halve the distance between me and it, so that I scrambled higher.
Ironically, it was easier to climb with the xipuku holding the cord, anchoring it, so that it was like scaling a pole, hard and unyielding. I looked up again. The device was hanging from a chain only fifteen feet above me. I was weakening all the time, succumbing to its noxious qualities, but I was getting closer. I repositioned my feet, took another long vertical step, then another. My head was thick, my strength failing. My stomach felt like I was seesawing from wave to cresting wave on a stormy ocean, but I knew I had to keep going, though every yard intensified the awful sensation.
Three more steps, and I might reach the lever for the lead blinders.
Two.
One.
I reached a weary hand out and clawed at it till I snagged the lever, setting the luxorite device swinging. Tears ran down my face as I tried again, catching it and flipping the shutters closed.
The throbbing in my head stopped almost immediately, but the nausea and weariness would take time to pass, more time, perhaps, than I could hang on. I unhooked the device and hitched it to my belt, knowing full well that the xipuku was waiting for me at the bottom and able to do exactly nothing about it. I looked up again. The rope ran all the way to the roof of the big top, to the vent in the outside.
Ten more feet.
My body protested, but I pulled myself up, feeling the stiff, warm breeze flowing through the gap at the top. I reached it, leaned across through the hole in the canvas and pushed my head and shoulders through. For a second I was holding on to nothing, inches from sliding back through the hole and falling to the sandy ring below, but then I was out in the air and trying to slow my sliding roll down the sloped angles of the big top. I saw flashes of smoggy sky and Nbeki rooftops, and then I was scrabbling for a handhold on guy ropes as they whipped past, as I tumbled over the roof and fell the last twelve feet to the weedy ground.
The luxorite device slipped out of my hands with the impact and popped open, and I lay on my back, all the other feelings of sickness suddenly overwhelmed by the simpler pain of falling. For a moment, I couldn’t move or think. It might have been a minute before I gingerly began isolating the pain and testing my body for serious damage.
My right side had taken the worst of it, and I feared I had broken a couple of ribs. My cheek was cut, but my arms, legs, and shoulder felt whole, if bruised. I was about to laugh with relief when the shadow of the xipuku fell across my face. I tried to get up, but my body cried out in agony, and I couldn’t twist far enough to draw my kukri.
The creature loomed over me, its eyes misty and its red muzzle dripping. It extended one massive fist, and I shrank away from it, as much as my sickly and battered body would let me, hiding my eyes. I felt rather than heard the massive beast moving close to me, and then I was scooped up, limp and bloody, and pulled absently into the creature’s arms. Stricken with terror, I opened my eyes and saw the animal looking away from me, and dimly I heard voices.
People were gathering.
I turned as much as I dared and saw, among the huddle of gawkers, a uniformed squad in blue.
Andrews.
The xipuku set me down and revolved to face them as rifles leveled and pistols raised.
“No,” I said. “It’s sick. It’s not going to—”
But my words were lost in the roar of gunfire.