Of Man and Manta Omnibus Read online

  'You mean when you tried to poach on our territory?'

  'I mean when you hauled the marker-stone twenty feet out of line and claimed three of my best white ash and a rock maple.' He gestured, and Subble saw the stone some distance beyond.

  'Reclaimed, you mean.'

  'And I said I'd take care of it when the time came.'

  The two men nodded, smirking.

  'Well, the time's come,' Veg said.

  The mustached man approached. 'That your second?' he asked, glancing disparagingly at Subble. 'A city slick?'

  'That's my second. Name's Subble.' He turned to Subble. 'This is Hank Jones. He and his brother work this lot next to mine - and some of mine, too.'

  'City duds!' Jones said. 'Well, I reckon bound'ry jumpers can't be choosy.' He unlimbered a roundhouse left at Veg.

  It was grandiose and clumsy by Subble's standards, but basic rules were evident. The two men moved out into the clearing beyond the tree, exchanging ferocious blows and taking almost no evasive action, but the object seemed to be to beat the opponent into submission without doing irreparable damage. Fists, feet and heads were freely employed, but never fingers or teeth, and eyes and crotches were left alone. Jones' brother called lewd encouragement and advice to his side, but did not interfere.

  Veg took the first blow on the ear and shrugged it off. His own fist drove into Jones' belly, forcing the man away. Jones charged back headfirst, butting with such power that Veg fell to the ground. As he rolled to hands and knees, Jones put his boot up and shoved him down again, following this with a hard kick with the side of the boot to the shoulder.

  Toe-points also outlawed, Subble surmised, and heel-stomping.

  Veg growled and leaped, fists alternating like pistons even before they met the target. He backed Jones against the beech and blasted mercilessly at his midsection until the man doubled over.

  Jones' brother edged toward the pair, and Subble also moved in. Veg was an independent sort, and would not have accepted a 'second' unless he deemed it necessary.

  The combatants bounced away from the tree, dirty and sweaty but with undiminished energies. Veg backed off to recover his balance, and Jones' brother surreptitiously poked a stick between his feet. Veg tripped, and Jones was on him immediately.

  Subble strode across the arena and stood before his opposite number. 'Friend, if you want to participate, pick your own fight,' he suggested.

  The man scowled and swung. The attack was incredibly crude - but Subble accepted the blow on the shoulder and replied with a moderate jab to the gut. He had no need of his special skills here, and preferred not to display them. Obviously these encounters were family affairs, and all interested parties participated.

  The single fight had become two - and privacy had dissipated. Only partially concerned with the mock-fight he was engaged in, Subble watched and listened to the other lumbermen as they emerged from the forest on all sides, until a great circle of cheerful faces surrounded them.

  The sounds of extracurricular activity penetrated a long distance, it seemed, and the neighbors wasted no time dealing themselves in.

  'Veg and Hank Jones are settling their account, as I make it,' one man explained to his companion. 'My guess is the stranger was standing in for Veg's second, and figured to keep Job Jones out of it. City man.'

  'I'll second the stranger,' the other said. 'He's holding up his end okay, considering.'

  'Yeah?' a third put in. 'I'm for Job.'

  'Son, you picked a loser. Neither Jones can last long without his brother.'

  The third raised his fist. 'I'm his brother, far as you're concerned.'

  And the third fight commenced. In like manner the two new antagonists were seconded, and soon a fourth battle was underway.

  Subble laughed inwardly. He had been right: fighting was as much pleasure as business to these hardy folk, and any pretext would do. They could not stand idly by and let others war; they had to join in. But it was man to man, not group to group.

  He ducked a swing from Job Jones and butted him in approved fashion. Job backed into another contestant, jarring the other man's aim as he cocked his fist 'Sorry,' Job muttered. 'Forget it,' the other said, and proceeded with his own concern.

  The ring was crowded now, resembling a ballroom filled with strenuous dancers. It was impossible to tell for which side any given man stood - yet each pair remained distinct and no one intentionally struck anyone except his assigned antagonist. As in the dance, each couple created its discrete formations in the midst of babel. There even seemed to be music.

  A hand fell upon his shoulder. 'Your turn's up,' Veg said jovially. 'Take a seat.'

  Surprised, Subble broke. Job Jones quit immediately and went to the far side to join his brother, while Veg squatted down to view the melee. Hank Jones was playing a harmonica with some rude skill... so there was music now!

  Before long the man who had seconded Subble joined them, his match lining up with the seated Joneses. New matches were still being formed from the uncommitted pool, distinguished by cleaner clothing and absence of bruises, and this in turn was constantly reinforced by arriving spectators. The men bore a common stamp of sturdy selfassurance and lusty living that contrasted with what Subble knew the city-norm to be.

  'No room for everyone at once,' Veg explained.

  Someone hauled out a guitar and began strumming more or less in time with the harmonica, and another man took a stick and began setting the beat on the scarred beech.

  Subble was astonished at the scope of the battle. A dozen pairs were brawling in the clearing, and as many more men were scattered about the fringe. Someone had hauled in a wagon bearing a monstrous keg of beer, and wooden mugs of the frothing liquid were being circulated along with pails of forest berries and triangular beechnuts.

  Subble accepted a warm beer and took a swallow. The activity had made him pleasantly thirsty - that, he realized, was part of the point of all this. It was technically a malt beverage - but home-brewed to about twenty proof. He smiled; he was sure the local soft-liquor taxmen had never met this keg.

  Veg noticed his reaction. 'You didn't come for this?' he asked with sudden concern.

  Subble drained his high-potency mug. 'You know it ain't!'

  This time Veg did not take exception to the language.

  The battle waned as the beer fumes drifted. The active participants became ten, then eight, as each contest fissioned into thirsty individuals. The lines of the seated extended almost entirely around the circle, the men conversing contentedly and waving their mugs.

  The show dwindled to two, and finally to a single encounter. The audience watched avidly now, rooting not so much for one man or the other as for the fight itself.

  'Which one is ours?' Subble inquired, having lost track. 'Or does it matter anymore?'

  'It matters,' Veg said. 'I hope it's Buff. He's a good man.'

  Buff was a good man, and in due course he was conceded the victory. The last two grabbed mugs and gulped them pantingly as they plumped to the ground. The music finished with a flourish and an expectant silence came.

  'Now the fun begins,' Veg muttered. Then, loudly: 'This meeting's to settle my boundary dispute with the Jones boys. Who did you second, Buff, you lop-eared bastard?'

  'Not you, turnip!' Buff called back. He finished his beer. 'I follow Zebra.'

  'You with me, animal?' Hank Jones yelled next.

  'Naw, brushface,' Zebra said. 'I'm with Kenson.'

  And so it went, Veg and Jones taking turns challenging each ascending member of the victory chain, exchanging good-natured insults at every step while the keg gurgled to its steaming dregs and beechnut shells littered the ground. Long before the line finished Subble recognized its outcome, but refrained from comment.

  'I follow this Fancy-Dan stranger here!' Subble's second proclaimed, and belched.

  'And who the hell's your better man, you city refugee?' Veg shouted for the benefit of those who had joined the party too late to know.
r />   'You are - in the daytime!' Subble cried. There was a burst of applause for the winner.

  In moments a strong-backed crew had moved the boundary rock to the position Veg indicated, and an impromptu a capella group sang several verses of The Frozen Logger.

  I see that you are a logger, And not just a common bum- 'Cause nobody but a logger Stirs his coffee with his thumb!

  Jones, it appeared, didn't feel like playing his instrument any more, but he did come up to shake hands. 'I wasn't going to cut those trees,' he said.

  The crowd dissipated, the men returning to their separate plots, happy for the break. The beermaster hitched his team and tilted down the track. Subble wondered who paid the cost of such refreshment, and decided that there were probably standing arrangements. Perhaps, instead of logging, he brewed - but received an allotment from the lumber mill anyway. Whatever it was, the system seemed to be functioning smoothly.

  Subble mouthed the conventionalities, but abruptly his attention was elsewhere. At the fringe of it all something deadly watched, hardly more than a dark shadow lost behind the trees. He focused his trained perceptions and picked up a momentary flicker, a suggestion of motion, a subdued whistle. As a wolf might glare at the fires of early man, waiting for the embers to die, waiting for sleep....

  'You did okay,' Veg said, and the shadow was gone. Subble sniffed, but picked up only the rotting leaves and pushing fungus of the forest floor. He had lost it.

  They tramped back to the original work area, the forest as empty as before, though Subble knew that many men were still within a mile. Soon the distant sounds of their labors would resume. Veg's tongue had been loosened by several mugs of brew. 'You catch on quick, and you fight fair once you get going. What do you make of our bunch?'

  'It's a good bunch. I wish it were possible to-'

  'Sub, don't start pulling that government-agent reserve on me again. We've been through a party together, and we won!' But it was Veg's own reserve that had dissipated.

  A party: fists and drink and a symbol of friendship. Why was it that men so often could only respect each other after testing their respective mettles in combat? Here it was physical; but in the more sophisticated, less open gatherings, male and female, it also went on continually. Men and animals measured each other before giving of each other, establishing, if not a pecking order, at least a nuance order. Was this a fundamental characteristic of life?

  Subble regretted that he was not free to explore this thesis thoroughly. Agents were doers rather than thinkers, however their inclinations might run. 'Well, there's little I can relate to,' he told Veg. 'My background is not like yours. I've never been to a - party - like this before. I was raised more conventionally.'

  Veg unpacked a collapsible saw from a cache in a tree.

  'I'm not exactly bright, but I know your education was not conventional,' he said. He led the way to a pile of peeled spruce logs. 'Grab an end and we'll get to know each other.'

  Subble accepted the proffered handle and fell into the rhythm of sawing. He knew that it was a matter of pull, not push, and that no weight should be applied; the saw's own weight would take it through the wood in its own fashion. The teeth were sharp and angled out alternately so that the cut was wider than the thickness of the saw; sharpening would be a tedious chore, but the saw worked well enough here.

  What he hadn't known was the importance of a balanced, comfortable position that provided circulation for the legs and free play for arms and upper body. He was doing it incorrectly, and though he was not tired he knew that an ordinary man would wear out quickly this way.

  Veg had marked off four foot lengths, and each time one bolt was severed he brought the next mark over the balancing point and began again. 'Now take me,' he said, pulling his end without noticeable exertion. 'Folks take me for an ordinary, no-count joker who won't eat meat, and that's okay. But I have things I-'

  He paused, and Subble knew that he had almost let slip something about the menace that had cast its strange eye upon the party. He certainly knew about it, and the matter was definitely relevant to Subble's mission; the signals were strong. But Veg was not yet ready to speak of this.

  They sawed for a while. Subble copied Veg's stance, and finally caught on to the swing of it. The motions were relaxing, vaguely similar to the steady beat of waves upon a lonely shore, leading the mind to introspection. Jets of sweet-smelling sawdust splattered across his foot and into the top of his sock, giving him another lesson in woodsman's clothing. The curlicues settled on his toe were twisted lengths, some like little worms, rather than the powder he had expected. The texture would depend upon the nature and hardness of the wood, he thought.

  'Well, like why I don't eat meat,' Veg was saying instead of whatever he had intended. 'It's okay to talk about how the world's too crowded, not enough places to live, not enough food to go around, everybody going crazy because there's no room to holler in. So they tell me I get a neurosis from all that, and that's why I have to make it harder for myself. You believe that?'

  'No,' Subble said, sensing the proper answer to the ambiguous question. Veg was trying to come to grips with the problems posed by the frustration of the territorial imperative, though he evidently was not familiar with the terms. Every creature sought out a territory of its own, distinct from that of other representatives of its species; birds sang, in part, to define by sound the limits of their domains, their foraging grounds, and men liked to talk of their homes as being their castles. The contest he had just participated in had been a rather tangible manifestation of that need; it was important for Veg to know exactly where his boundaries were, even though the land was his only to the extent of limited cutting rights. Successful defense of those boundaries gave him a fundamental satisfaction; he had fought for his territory and won. Neurotic? Hardly; it was a return to normalcy.

  'You're damn right, no. Those headshrinkers never set their twinkletoes in the forest. They've never been off-world. That's why-'

  Once more that pause. Veg kept approaching the key and shying away.

  'You're a vegetarian - and this is part of what I may have been sent to investigate,' Subble said, helping him. 'But you don't feel free to tell me just what the connection is.'

  'Yeah.' They sawed for another period in silence. An inchworm mounted Subble's shoe, struggling to navigate the unsteady sawdust strings and freezing when it thought it was observed. All creatures had their problems and their frights, he thought. An inchworm hid itself in stillness; a man in silence.

  Veg tried again. 'Tell me if you ever heard anything like this. Maybe it makes sense to you. When I was a kid, my brother - well, he was a good guy. Everybody liked him. I liked him. We fought sometimes, but no real trouble - I mean, I had the muscle and he had the savvy, so we didn't feel crowded. We'd go around together all the time, but I knew he was the one going to make good. In the long run, you know, because of his brains. I didn't mind. He was right for it.

  'Then he took sick. He was in the hospital, but he looked okay. I saw him there, and he said he felt fine, and that they told him he was going to be back in school again soon and to keep up with his studies. I guess that's the only time I was jealous of him, a little, 'cause all he had to do was lie around all day, while I had all those dull classes.

  'Then he died. A teacher just came up and told me one day, that he'd gone the way they always knew he would. From the first day, almost, they'd known. Only they never told him that, or his friends, or me. Cancer - and all those doctors lying about it, telling us he was getting better and all, when he was dying. Them and their hypocritic oath. I didn't believe it at first; I used to dream he was still there, only he'd broken his leg or something and they thought it was real bad, but it got better after all, you know? I guess it took me a couple of years to believe he was gone, all the way down in my mind.

  'And it got to me. I mean, here was my brother, a good guy, nobody had anything against him, but he died. And it got in my head, if there'd been this god - I do
n't believe in God - this guy looking down, saying "One of these two boys has to go, there isn't room anymore for both," and he had to make the choice, see ... well, I was the one he should have taken, because I didn't have much to give the world anyway. You have to save the sheep and cast out the goat, or whatever, and he was the sheep.

  'But this god took the wrong one. And there was this destiny, this good life, meant for my brother - and the wrong boy left to fill it. I was living his life, and it was all wrong, all wrong. But then I thought, now this mistake's been made, and it's too late to fix it, but it isn't all gone quite if I save as much as I can. What I have to do is, is - well, make something out of it the way he was supposed to make it, you know? Prove that maybe it wasn't, a big mistake, just a small one, and not so much was changed after all.'

  They sawed another bolt in silence. The inchworm had negotiated the shoe and disappeared into the crushed leafery beyond, and the sawdust was mounding tremendously three or four inches high. A swift fly had settled upon it, savoring its freshness, perhaps. The scene darkened alarmingly, then brightened as an unseen cloud crossed the sun. It was amazing how absorbing the microcosm became with a little concentration.