War in Heaven (61 page)

A whole art of hunting an animal
, he remembered Haidar once telling him,
is to become that animal.

This becoming, he thought, was more than just recalling the bear's habits and trying to guess what the bear would do next and where he might go. It was feeling the power of the world through his feet, and feeling his own terrible power course through him every time his legs moved and he connected once again with the ice or snow. It was a sense of playfulness undergirded by an unshakable confidence in his ability to survive even the worst winter storm. Above all, it was
animajii
, the wild joy of simply being alive and tasting the marvellous tang of salt water or basking in the golden rays of the sun.

I am not I. I am Totunye, of the Old Ones, the Uryu Kweitil Onsu.

At least twice, his close identification with the bear helped him continue the hunt when he might have been stymied. Around midday, he came to a great dish of
rashuwel
many miles wide where shallow dunes of spindrift snow had obliterated the bear's tracks. He might have ploughed straight ahead and then spent hours circling the
rashuwel
on the other side in hope of discovering where the tracks re-emerged on to the hardpack snow. Instead, he immediately turned to the south and, after a hundred yards, picked up the bear's tracks again. It seemed that the bear had avoided the
rashuwel
altogether. Blowing spindrift snow, while not really dangerous or difficult to cross, can tickle a bear's nose and make him sneeze. And
this
bear was an Old One, after all, who obviously possessed a keenly developed sense of propriety. He would consider such sneezing beneath his dignity. And so he had chosen to make a slight detour on his way towards his destination — that is, if he truly had a destination and wasn't just wandering the ice in search of seals.

Another time, later in the day, Danlo came upon a
varulia.
This was a mile-wide patch of dark, churning water where the ocean current had kept the ice from closing. The bear's tracks led right up to the edge of the
varulia
and simply gave way to the ocean. Since Danlo could not directly follow the bear, this time he had to choose between circling the
varulia
to the north or south. But the
varulia
might be ten or twenty miles long; as he examined the ice right and left, he could see no end to it, for the black ribbon of water vanished into the horizon in both directions. He stood there for a while wondering which direction he should choose. And then, at last, he thought to pile up many pieces of pack ice into a mound. When he climbed this mound, he could see farther. To the north, the
varulia
closed into a sheet of hard ice at perhaps four and a half miles distance, whereas to the south it froze up not more than three miles away. Circling to the south, it seemed, would save him some miles of his journey. But the ocean current flowed swiftly through the
varulia
from south to north; common sense told him that the bear would let the current carry him northwards for a few miles, perhaps all the way to its end, before he climbed out on to the ice on the other side and shook himself dry. According to this logic, then, Danlo should circle to the north. But there are always senses beyond mere logic. Somehow Danlo knew that the bear wouldn't let the current sweep him down the length of the
varulia.
He could almost
see
the bear swimming hard against the current, trying to keep a straight course to the west. Perhaps the bear simply wished to resume his journey across the ice in as direct a line as possible. Or perhaps another reason led him to take this harder way. The bear was almost certainly past his prime. But not far past, Danlo thought. With a strange tingling running through his spine into his own arms and legs, he sensed that the bear still fairly quivered with a tremendous vitality and wanted to test his strength against the icy ocean waters. It was really a matter of pride. Therefore the bear would swim straight ahead. And therefore, the southern route around the
varulia
should prove the quickest after all, as Danlo found when he circled it in this direction and found the bear's tracks re-emerging from the ocean almost exactly where he had envisioned they would. He might have rejoiced in this small triumph, but he had skied eight miles to the single mile that the bear had swum, and he had fallen even farther behind. With the sun itself falling towards the purplish horizon, he knew that he had to find the bear, and soon, or else risk losing him in the growing darkness.

I must follow the bear, even into the night
, he thought.
I must follow my fate.

As he pushed ahead towards the sun, he thought about an Alaloi saying concerning fate:
ti-anasa daivam.
This could be translated as an imperative to love his fate — or that he should suffer his fate in silence and acceptance.
Anasa
meant both to love and to suffer; to an Alaloi man opening his heart to the terrible beauty of the world, there was almost no difference. If it was truly his fate to die alone out on the windswept sea, then he should sink down to the ice and face west one last time. He should pick the ice out of his eyes in order to behold the infinite glory of the world. Even in the agony of his freezing limbs and his final breaths, he should give thanks for being alive. He should marvel that of all the beings that had been born since the beginning of the world, it was his fate to have lived at this time, and to die.

Ti-anasa daivam.

But it was his fate to find the bear. He came upon him just before sunset. As he crested a shallow dune, he almost immediately descried a small yellowish-white dot against the faintly blue ice a mile ahead of him. He drew in a breath of cold air, and froze into motionlessness. With the sun so close to the edge of the world, the ice and sky fairly blazed with colours, and it was hard to see. Nevertheless, he stood for a long time facing west, drinking in the dazzling light of the world. For the count of ten beats of his heart, the dot did not move. After another fifty beats, the dot still appeared as no more than a hump on the ice or a snowblock. But then Danlo looked harder, reaching out with his eyes and opening them to the varying wavelengths of light despite the pain of such seeing. After a while, he could make out the form of the bear. He sat with his back towards Danlo as he stared straight ahead and down at the ice. Danlo stared, too, stared past the bear at the dark circle of an open seal hole. Here, where the current flowed swiftly up from the south, the ice was less thick than in other places, and the seal holes would be open to the air, as this one was. The bear sat waiting for a seal to come up and breathe, waiting as patiently as any Alaloi hunter.

Ti-anasa daivam.

For a long time, Danlo stood there on the sparkling snow, watching and waiting himself. He almost couldn't believe his good luck. The bear's whole attention was focused on the seal hole; it might be possible for him simply to walk up to the bear and take him from behind. With the wind still blowing steadily from the west, the bear would not smell him. In truth, when he opened his nostrils and let in the wind,
he
could smell the bear. It was a dark, musky scent almost intoxicating in its aliveness. It excited Danlo to sense the bear in this way, and he suddenly found himself moving over the snow closer to its source. But he moved slowly, gracefully, silently. Almost silently: as he slid one ski ahead of the other over the soft,
kushku
snow, the faint suss of wood through shifting white ice crystals fell over him like the sound of thunder. He prayed that the bear would not hear him. He prayed that the wind whooshing along the ice would drown out such lesser sounds, and so it happened, for the bear didn't once move his head or even twitch his ears.

Ti-anasa daivam, follow your fate.

For what seemed like for ever, Danlo stalked the bear. As he drew closer, he could see the bear more clearly. The bear sat with his rump low to the ice, his great shoulders hunched up and his long neck and snout pointed straight towards the seal hole. All his fierce concentration pointed in this direction, too. Danlo thought it somewhat arrogant of the bear to sit this way, facing the wind. Obviously, the bear feared nothing that moved across the ice, neither the wind nor other bears nor even man. It was possible, Danlo thought, that this bear had never seen a man. That was the great mystery and power of the bears (at least of the
Uryu Kweitil Onsu)
, that they should fear nothing in all the world.

Ti-anasa daivam.

At a distance of a hundred yards, Danlo stepped out of his skis and sank down low, belly to the snow. Still gripping his bear spear, he inched his way forwards. He crept across five yards of cold snow and then ten. Beneath him, beneath layers of snow and ice, the ocean rushed all salty and warm like the blood of the world. After another five yards of such painstaking stalking, he sensed the connection between the bear and himself growing ever stronger. At any moment, he feared, the bear might turn to look at him. And so he lay motionless in the snow for a while and covered his black facemask with his white mittens. Once, many years before, he had seen a bear employ just such a stratagem while stalking a group of seals playing upon a rock. In order not to be seen against the white ice downwind of this rock, the bear had crept silently forwards, always holding one white paw over his black nose. After Danlo had counted out a hundred heartbeats, he began moving forwards again in a similar manner. He kept one hand close to his face, the other clamped around his spear. At thirty yards, the scent of the bear grew almost overpowering. Danlo felt the growling emptiness of his belly and the terrible screaming hunger of every cell of his body. He remembered a word, then,
waashkelay
, which meant simply 'meat hunger'. He realized that on some deep level, the grains and pulses and other vegetable foods that he had eaten for so many years had never truly satisfied him. Always, buried in the tissues of his heart and belly, there had burned a deep desire to consume the meat of another animal and to taste the marvellous red tang of blood once more.

Ti-anasa daivam.

After he had crept very close to the bear — no more than twenty yards away — the wind softened and the world fell almost silent. He could almost hear the bear's deep, patient breaths. He himself tried to breathe more softly and slowly, and to quiet the booming thunder of his heart. His entire concentration fell on the bear like the light of the sun. They were the only two beings on all the surface of the sea; here, beneath the deep blue sky, in the loneliness of the blue-white ice, it was almost impossible to imagine that human beings lived in a great stellar city not more than sixty miles away. The great war that his kind fought among the cold stars seemed impossibly distant, almost as if it had happened in a different age of the universe long ago. The Alaloi tribes a thousand miles to the west wouldn't know of this war, although they might look up at the night-time sky and wonder at the growing mass of the Universal Computer that devoured the familiar stars like some dark,
shaida
moon. They couldn't dream that the strange lights that they called
blinkans
were really supernovas, or that men in black ships from far away might soon turn their star-killing machines upon the sun. And Danlo couldn't dream this either, for just beyond the bear, caught for the moment between heaven and earth, the sun blazed all golden-red like some mysterious fire burning away both past and future. For him (and for the bear) there was only this eternal now-moment between the beats of his heart when the sky stood still and the wind did not move.

Ti-anasa daivam.

At last, however, the bear himself moved. But he didn't surge forwards to the rising of the seal from its dark hole; rather he turned in curiosity to look behind him. Danlo knew that it wasn't his smell that caused the bear to move, nor any sound, for he had frozen once again, this time becoming just another white mound against all the other mounds of wind-blown snow. No, it was something other, some mysterious connection between them almost pulsing along the ice. Danlo knew that the bear would see him. Bears' eyes aren't very good; but
this
bear would look straight at him and see the white fur of Danlo's parka as the fur of another animal and not as snow. Therefore, Danlo smiled to himself and ripped off his facemask and goggles, the better to see. Then, in an explosion of muscles coming alive and powdered snow flung out into the air, he leapt to his feet and charged the bear. It was the only thing that he could do. He had to get inside the bear's circle, and quickly, or he might lose his chance of killing him. Most animals, he knew, had such a circle of fight or flight. To remain outside this circle allowed an animal simply to turn and flee; but if one stepped in close, within striking distance, then the threatened animal would have no choice but to fight for his life. Danlo did not want to give the bear any choice. Although he sensed that the bear would fight no matter what he did, just for the sheer singing joy of fighting, he still might run away. After all, the bear might see him as a truly strange and fierce animal, with his flashing blue eyes and his long spear pointed straight towards the bear's heart.

Ti-anasa daivam
, he prayed. And then,
Never killing or harming another being, not even in one's thoughts.

There was a moment, then. The bear, stunned and outraged at Danlo's unbelievable aggression, charged
him.
He bellowed and snorted and burst across the snow at a frightening speed, seeming barely to touch its sparkling surface. Then as the two of them came together, he rose up to his full twelve feet of height like a great white god. He was a huge bear, truly one of the Old Ones, fifteen hundred pounds of fur and bone and great bunching muscles as hard as shatterwood. He stood snarling down at Danlo with his black lips pulled back from his teeth. And Danlo stood below on the soft snow with his spear held ready, all the while staring at the bear's black nose, his black tongue, his fathomless black eyes. Although his huge teeth were white and sharp as daggers, Danlo knew that bears rarely struck with their teeth. They preferred to kill by paw and claw, and these terrible weapons the bear held out wide to his right and left above Danlo's head. He was so close to the bear that he could smell his steaming breath and feel its heat. At any moment the bear might swing his paw downwards with all the force of a falling tree; at any moment Danlo might push his spear upwards towards the bear's exposed chest. Danlo's heart beat once and then twice, very quickly, very hard. And then the moment finally came, the moment between life and death. The moment
of
life and death. He stared at the bear, and the bear stared at him, watching and waiting. For what seemed like an eternity, Danlo felt himself become a strange being rising up out of the icescapes of a strange and silent world. Without warning, the bear suddenly swung his paw down towards Danlo's head. He moved with astonishing speed. Danlo only just managed to jump back far enough to escape the hard black pads of the bear's mighty paw. But the sharp claws raked the air an inch from Danlo's eyes and caught his furs, ripping through to the skin and muscle beneath. A pain like five knives of fire burned through his chest, but all his awareness focused on jerking free from the bear's claws and avoiding his gnashing teeth. Snow sprayed all about them, and the bear snorted at the smell of blood suddenly staining Danlo's white furs. Again the bear reared up and flailed out with his other paw. And again Danlo moved back, avoiding the blow. And then he himself moved with lightning speed, in towards the bear. He astonished himself at the ferocity of his attack; perhaps he even astonished the bear. For the bear had almost certainly never seen a human being before, and he seemed not to know the power or purpose of a spear. There came a blinding moment when Danlo struck upwards, aiming the flint spearpoint at the soft spot just beneath the bear's ribs. All the strength of his body and being went into this single thrust. At first, however, he couldn't tell if he had pierced the heart spot, for the setting sun behind the bear filled his eyes with a brilliant white light and exploded inside his brain. All around him the ice shimmered like diamonds beneath the deep blue sky. And then the bear let loose a long, low, dreadful bellow, and he knew. He stood on the blood-spattered snow, fighting for breath, fighting for life, and he drove the spear home. A terrible strength welled up from inside him. His blood burned through his veins, and his breath steamed from his mouth, as wild as the wind. He kept pushing forwards with the spear, forwards and upwards, all the while letting the weight of the bear's death struggle drive the shaft deeper. The bear tried to bite him and catch him with his paws, but he was in too close, so close that he could almost lick the long white fur of the bear's belly. Again and again the bear bellowed and shook and raged. Danlo felt the bear's great power and life shuddering down the spear's shaft, pouring out in sprays of bright red blood. Some of this magical substance got into his eyes, and its intense saltiness burned worse than tears. Even in his killing drive, he wanted to weep for the bear and, even more, for himself. For he felt himself caught up by fate, even as a single ice crystal is swept away by the wind. But then, as the bear murmured and weakened and the light went out in his eyes, Danlo knew that he had moved to a deeper purpose. In truth, he was not a helpless ice crystal at all; when he looked inside his fiery heart, he saw that all the force and fury of the wind was just his own furious will towards life. In the end, he had chosen. He had killed the bear out of all the wild joy of life, in utter freedom, and this was a terrible and beautiful thing.