Departures

Lucy put her hands on the rail and leaned on it as she peered across the moat at the pair of brown-furred creatures on the far side. “They’re interesting beasts, Miocene hominoids that aren’t part of the dryopithecid group that led to the great apes or the ramapithecids humans are descended from. They’re just-by themselves. I’m glad we have them. Hardly any zoos do.”

“I believe that. They’re bloody hell to catch. From the fossils, they’re supposed to have been common around there. You couldn’t prove it by me. I saw one in a tree for half a second, and I finally managed to catch these two. Other than that, forget it.”

Cutter reached into his pocket, pulled out some cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies, and threw them across the moat to the animals he’d captured. The beasts were nimble enough on the ground. On all fours, they hurried over to the cookies. They grabbed them with hands not much different from Cutter’s and greedily gobbled them up.

Lucy clucked the horrified cluck of any zookeeper who catches a visitor feeding the animals. Then she glanced over at the hunter. “How do they know those are good to eat? They haven’t had any here, I know that, and they certainly never had any back in the Miocene.”

“Oh, but they did,” Cutter said. Now Lucy was frankly staring at him. He went on. “I wasn’t having any luck with fruit for bait, and so-”

“You tried something else. Sure. But why cookies?”

He grinned at her. “Well, what would you use if you were going after Oreopimecus?’’

SECRET NAMES

I haven’t the slightest idea whether this story is fantasy or science fiction. I think it might have fit well in the old Unknown, which often walked the fine pixilated line between the two genres.

Madyu was boiling up a batch of willow-bark tea when Jorj, the tribe’s chief hunter, poked his head into the shaman’s tent. “What do you want?” Madyu asked crossly, not caring to be interrupted in the middle of his spells. He was convinced they added to the pain-relieving value of the tea.

“We will be setting out shortly, wizardry sir,” Jorj answered. He was a big, broad-shouldered man of about forty, with strong features and a brown beard just beginning to go gray. His skill with a bow had made him rich; he wore a silver quarter from the Old Time in each ear and owned a necklace strung with many more. He did not have it on now, for fear of a mistimed jingle spooking the prey. He went on, “Some magic to bring the beasts to us would be welcome.”

“Oh.” The spells on the willow-bark tea would have to wait: it was no cure for the ache of an empty belly. Madyu said, “I’ll set to work at once, Jorj Rainbowstar.”

The shaman kept his voice low, but Jorj’s head whipped around in alarm all the same. No one in the tribe save Madyu and perhaps a favorite woman had any business knowing the hunter’s secret name; should an enemy somehow come into possession of it, he might use it to wreak all sorts of baneful sorcery.

Jorj said, “I hope the gods are more in the mood to listen to you than they were last moon-quarter. We came back almost empty-handed.”

Madyu knew the chief hunter was obliquely criticizing him for having used his secret name. He dipped his head to acknowledge the rebuke. “I shall do my best, I promise you. Magic is chancy and imperfect, as you no doubt know.”

“Oh, aye. If it weren’t, we’d all be fatter than we are, and that’s a fact.” Jorj laughed a big, booming manly laugh that finished the job of putting the shaman in his place. Madyu, who

was scrawny, clumsy, and nearsighted to boot, felt his ears turn hot. Laughing still, Jorj left the tent and started shouting to the rest of the hunting band.

With a last mournful look at the bronze tea kettle, Madyu decked himself in the raiment required for hunting magic. He, too, had a coin necklace. His, unlike Jorj’s, was made of quarters silvery on the outside but with a copper center. Most shamans preferred those to silver. For one thing, they had to have been made by sorcery; no modern smith could turn out anything like them. For another, the numbers they bore were consistently bigger than those on silver coins. Each shaman had his own explanation for why that was so, but all agreed it had to have some sort of magical import.

Madyu bowed to north and south, east and west. He patted the ground to show his reverence for the earth powers, waved his hands through the air to draw the attention of the sky gods. Then he began the first prayer of the ritual, the one to make keen the noses of the hunting hounds.

He was a conscientious craftsman and did his best to ensure the hounds’ success. Not only did he call the beasts dawgs after the fashion of his own tribe and those closest to it, he also named them sheeyas, as did the KayJun clans to the east, and perros, as did the Makykanoes to the west and south. He did not know or presume to guess which language the gods spoke, but preferred to cover as many bets as he could.