Journey Beyond Tomorrow (Jerry eBooks) by Robert Sheckley

Author:Robert Sheckley [Sheckley, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE BEAST OF THE UTOPIA

This creature was like nothing that Joenes had ever seen. In front it resembled a tiger, except that its massive head was black rather than tawny-striped. In the middle it was reminiscent of a bird, for rudimentary wings grew just below its shoulders. In back it was like a snake, possessing a tail that was twice as long as the Beast itself, as thick in its thickest part as a man’s thigh, and scaled and barbed all over.

All of this Joenes saw in an instant, so strongly did the Beast impress itself upon his senses. When the Beast crouched to spring, Joenes scooped the fainting Laka in his arms and fled from the cabin. The Beast did not follow at once, but amused itself with a few minutes of wanton destruction before giving chase.

Joenes was able to join a group of village hunters. These men, with Lunu at their head, stood with spears and arrows poised, ready to engage in battle against the Beast.

Standing nearby was the village witch doctor and his two assistants. The witch doctor’s wrinkled old face was painted ocher and blue. In his right hand he held a skull, and with his left hand he poked frantically through a pile of magical ingredients. At the same time he was cursing his assistants.

“Idiots!” he was saying. “Criminally incompetent fools! Where is the moss from the dead man’s head?”

“It is under your left foot, sir,” one of the assistants said.

“What a place for it!” the witch doctor responded. “Give it here. Now where is the red shroud string?”

“In your pouch, sir,” the other assistant answered.

The witch doctor drew it out and threaded it through the eye sockets of the skull. He bound the moss in the nose opening, then turned to his assistants.

“You, Huang, I sent to read the stars; and you, Pollito, I sent to learn the message of the sacred golden deer. Tell me quickly and without delay what these messages were and what the gods request in order for us to stop the Beast tonight.”

Huang said, “The stars told us to bind rosemary widdershins tonight.”

The witch doctor seized a sprig of rosemary from his pile of ingredients and bound it to the skull with a shroud string, turning the string three times as the sun turns.

Pollito said, “The message of the sacred golden deer was to give the skull a pinch of snuff; that he said would be enough.”

“Spare me your moronic rhyming,” the witch doctor said, “and give me the snuff.”

“I don’t have it, sir.”

“Then where is it?”

“Earlier you said that you had put the snuff in a safe place.”

“Naturally. But in which safe place did I put it?” the witch doctor asked, rummaging wildly through his ingredients.

“Perhaps it’s at the Divining Place,” Pollito said.

“No, none of those places seem right,” the witch doctor said. “Let me think . . .”

The Beast, however, gave him no further time for thought. It trotted out of Joenes’s cabin and sprang at the line of hunters.

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