Savannah Grey by Cliff McNish

Author:Cliff McNish
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780761382522
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group

19

The Ocrassa waited for a new opponent to emerge from the mammals, but none came. Whatever nature was working on, it kept the secret to itself. Brooding within one of its temporary lairs, the Ocrassa decided it needed a defender to watch over and guard it. But where to find such a thing? Even if it could train some of nature’s predators to do its bidding, the Ocrassa realized that it could never trust them not to turn against it.

Time, then, to create a life-form of its own.

The Ocrassa had learned a great deal about how creatures bred over its long existence. The main problem was how to blend different species to produce a distinctive new animal that obeyed it.

It began cautiously. Taking eggs and sperm from numerous animals, it variously combined and ripened them. The resultant birth-things never lived for long, but one or two had lungs and cried before they died. The Ocrassa watched their last hours, fascinated.

Gradually, over time, it was more successful. A snake-frog combination expired almost immediately, but its long, skinny body hopped once first. An ox-leopard loped confusedly around for six whole days, its brain wanting to hunt meat, its stomach desiring grass. The Ocrassa drowned it without a thought, but learned from it and began afresh.

After centuries, it managed to combine the intelligence of a pig and a dog into a workable unity. The fusion was smart and fiercely loyal, and could be trained to hunt. But best of all, when the Ocrassa created a second one, it could breed.

Once it was satisfied the template was good enough, the Ocrassa bred the pig-dogs in large numbers, posted them surreptitiously around its lairs and sent them in forays to look for nature’s traps. The pig-dogs were trustworthy, enjoyed their work, and each one was dedicated to its master.

But the Ocrassa still felt vulnerable. It needed a more personal defender at its side. Something large enough to deter any predator, but also shrewd enough to be able to act alone if needed.

It required every scrap of the Ocrassa’s prodigious understanding of life and nature to create the masterpiece that followed. More than a thousand years of trial and error were needed to perfect the body, ten times that to design the brain.

When it was finally ready, the Ocrassa blew anxiously on its creation to dry it out and inflate its lungs. The creature lay for a time wreathed in a bed of twigs, learning how to breathe. All living things, no matter what they will become, must first learn how to breathe.

It was two meters wide. Standing erect on its bipedal legs, it was nine meters tall. The legs were thick haunches of meat, massively powerful, but the hollow, thin-walled bones made it deceptively fleet when running. The body was a tour de force of camouflage: part fur, part skin. The creature was able to change color at will. It could shade to grey areas, hide in small niches, disappear. At night, unless it wanted to be seen, it was undetectable.

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