Anti-Man

I sat down next to Him. The snow was falling harder now, though it still might be only a local storm or even a short-term squall. He didn't speak, and I didn't feel like interrogating Him. We sat for about five minutes until the warmth we had gained from marching drained out and the cold began seeping back into my bones. He had given way completely to that unknown part of His personality, and I could not see how to approach Him, how to ask what was the matter. When another five minutes passed, I decided on the blunt route. "What is it?" I asked.

"Jacob, I am sitting here in a quandary, faced with two decisions, each of which will be in some way unpleasant." He spoke in that same, deep, even tone that denied emotion. That was what a machine should sound like — not like a seductress. "One of the courses of action that is open to me will end with your becoming a little less sure of me, a little frightened of me."

"No," I said.

"Yes, it will I know. You will be slightly disgusted, and it will have a bearing on the way you feel about me. Maybe small, maybe large. I don't want to lose your friendship."

"The second alternative?"

"I can postpone continuation of the changes going on in me, lose the momentum of biological processes, and wait until we are to the cabin to begin. It might mean a lost day."

"What are you trying to say?" Despite myself, I let a note of fear slip through my words. It must have showed, for He grinned and slapped my back.

"I need food," He said. "I can't wait until we get to the cabin. I've started new systems, and I would suffer a complete setback if I had to wait much longer for food to create the energy needed to form large quantities of muscle tissue."

"I don't see how you propose to get food out here. Also, I don't see what you could possibly do to upset me."

"All right," He said. "I will not postpone the changes. If you do not like what happens, try to remember that it is necessary."

He took off His gloves again and knelt on the earth. He pressed His fingers against the ground after brushing the snow away over a two-foot square area. As I watched, His hands seemed to melt and run into the soil. The frozen ground cracked and spattered up as His lengthening fingers probed and displaced it. Several minutes later, He smiled and withdrew His hands, His fingers flowing back into normal shape as if they had been rubber that had been stretched and now released. "I found two of them," He said mysteriously. "Over there."

"What?" I asked.

"Watch."

I followed him across the clearing to a jumble of rotting logs and brush. He hefted the logs aside effortlessly, revealing a burrow of some sort. He reached into it, and He made His arm grow longer now, not just His fingers. Abruptly, there was a squealing and thrashing from inside the burrow. He drew His arm back out, a snow rabbit clutched in His fist. The animal had been strangled. A few moments later, He had done the same thing to a second rabbit and had brought it out and placed it next to the first.

"This is the part you may find disgusting," He said. "I'll have to eat them raw. No time for a fire and too risky to start one anyway."

"Doesn't bother me," I said, though I was not too sure what I felt. The blood wouldn't bother me, certainly, nor would the spilling of intestines and gore. If it did, then I might as well give up being a doctor. Eating a raw, warm rabbit, though.

He lifted the first rabbit in His left hand while He thinned His right fingers and slid the tiny tips into the game, loosening the hide from the inside. The animal peeled, literally, like a banana. He did the second one the same way, then set to devouring them before they could stiffen and freeze. He took large bites of the greasy flesh, blood dribbling down His chin, until He had consumed everything but the bones and the fur that He had previously skinned off. He hardly seemed to chew the food, but bolted it down in an effort to finish the unpleasant business as swiftly as possible.

"Okay," He said, standing and wiping the mess from His cheeks and lips. "Time to go."

His eyes glittered.