Perhaps Ba'al had no weaknesses. And perhaps, Quantrill thought, he would be wise to stop thinking of Ba'al as an opponent.
Sandy slipped an arm behind the boar's pricked ears; spoke with Childe as she scratched the sloping forehead; then looked around her. Childe pointed toward Quantrill who had not moved from his position, and Sandy trudged across the clearing.
Voice unsteady but determined: "I don't think he'll be as grouchy if you're holding my hand. If he lowers his head, you be ready to run for the soddy," she said, and then, "Are you sure you want to go through with this?"
He gripped her hand. "Yep," he lied, and together they strolled toward the watchful beast.
Childe continued to scratch and cajole the boar as the others neared him. At a low peremptory squeal from the great muzzle, Childe put up a restraining hand. Quantrill stopped, one foot planted for retreat, while Childe grabbed the dark gray neck ruff. Quantrill saw indecision in Sandy's face but only intense concentration in Childe's expression. As though cautioning a playmate in some serious game the little girl said, "Don't move, now." With short mincing steps, Ba'al began to circle the object of his scrutiny.
"Better move away," Quantrill said softly to Sandy.
"I don't know," she quavered.
"If you don't know, then move away," he gritted.
He did not turn his head but kept his legs flexed, listening to the steady thud of hooves, the snorts and snufflings behind him as Sandy backed off. He resisted the urge to giggle wildly, hearing Sandy's soothing, repeated, "soooo, pig." The small of his back itched like fury. He did not scratch.
When the huge boar completed his circuit, he stood almost near enough for Quantrill to touch, ears twitching fore and aft, eyes roving up and down. Then a peculiar ripple of shoulder muscles; Childe responded by shinnying down from her perch. The tiny girl and the great beast exchanged grunts and subtle headwags. "Just you and him," she said, nodding to Quantrill, stepping aside.
Quantrill showed both hands, spreading his arms slowly, then stood erect. This displeased the boar who snorted and reared, forequarters rising so that the forward hooves pawed higher than a man's waist.
Quantrill stepped back in a defensive stance, and too quickly. Ba'al dropped instantly to all-fours, his vast head lowering. The next moves sequenced almost too quickly for Sandy and Childe to follow.
As Quantrill sprang backward, Ba'al rushed forward to close the gap — but without lowering his head.
Quantrill did not wait to see if this was a true charge, but skipped aside in a double leap like a sidelong fencer's balestra ending with a shoulder roll, the total maneuver covering ten meters. He danced to his feet ready for a sprint to the soddy; judged it hopeless; prepared to dodge again.
Ba'al just stood quietly, grunting, flicking that ridiculous tail, studying the man. Childe clapped her hands in glee. "You funned him," she explained.
"Great," Quantrill said, spitting dust, searching for a fist-sized stone but, to his good fortune, finding none.
"He's scaring the shit out of me," he added, and straightened up.
Again the boar reared, a faint squeal issuing from his muzzle. "You're too high," Childe called — and then Quantrill realized that the boar was interpreting his erect posture as a dominance ploy. Flexing his knees again, Quantrill waited, now sharing the same eye-level with Ba'al, neither dominating nor submitting. The forequarters danced, the great head lashing side-to-side. A demonstration; a show of the boar's virtuosity with natural weapons.
Quantrill found himself grinning. He couldn't match that demonstration if he wanted to. Instead he went down on one knee, held his hands forward. In his mouth there was not enough spit to float a paramecium.
Then, each hoof placed with silent precision, Ba'al stepped forward; snuffled the open palms; placed his snout between Quantrill's hands. The reddish little eyes were wary, and level with his own. The musky scent, he told himself, wasn't all
that bad. He wondered if Ba'al was thinking the same thing.
Childe was cheering. "Scratch under his chin," Sandy called, and Quantrill did it. A soft repetitious grunting said that he was, at last, doing something right. A moment later, Childe and Sandy crowded close to scratch the boar's thick hide, laughing in relief.
In the next few minutes Quantrill learned that a Russian boar could be charmed by a belly-scratch, and that Childe was adept at searching out ticks within the secondary fur under Ba'al's coarse bristles. In all, Quantrill counted twenty-three scars, some of them obviously bulletholes in a hide tough as kevlar. From time to time he caught the eye of the indolent boar and knew that the animal did not wholly trust him; might never trust any man. Quantrill felt no disappointment. He felt exactly the same about Ba'al.
When Childe rode away to play that afternoon, Quantrill strode into the soddy and stretched himself out on his mummybag, exhausted. To Sandy he admitted that every fiber in his body buzzed with fatigue.
"How could I relax," he sighed. "This is the only time in my life I've ever felt — well, — like I might be second-rate."
CHAPTER 73
A dying sun peeked beneath the overcast, a brief burst of pink and saffron against the bellies of bruise-tinted clouds that hinted of rain before morning. Quantrill tightened the tarp over his hovercycle, glad that he would not have to traverse fifty klicks of mud on a wheeled vehicle the next day. He hurried back to the soddy at Sandy's whistle: already he knew the bright three-note tune of 'come and get it'.
After dinner, the first wind-driven drops pattered against the window as Sandy shopped for a favored holo channel. The FBN channel was showing a rerun, and Sandy almost switched before the glowing legend crawled across the top of the screen in high relief: TECH DIFFICULTIES FORCE CANCELLATION OF FBN SPECIAL. 'THE QUANTRILL REPLY', SCHEDULED FOR THIS TIME.
Sandy turned to Quantrill who sat frowning with a handful of popcorn halfway to his mouth. "You? On a Fed channel?"
Shrug: "Not unless it's a countercharge against me. I made a dumb threat right after I — well, never mind.
It was plain stupid. Anyhow, I'm not the only Quantrill in the world."
"That's debatable," she smiled, and tried the clear Mex channel which was nearing the end of its newscast.
A silver-haired gentleman sat alone while be hind him a crudely animated logo showed a silhouette running endlessly toward a green and yellow banner with a central star-flecked blue orb. "… But the Brazilian embassy would not comment on the rumor that Salter's defection is connected with the sharp seismic jolt which struck Utah's Cotton-wood Canyon area earlier today. Now for the weather—"
But Ted Quantrill was on his feet, grinning. "Cottonwood Canyon? Seismic, hell; Ethridge got through!
" He stood with arms spread, staring up as if to focus on something far above the low ceiling. "Hear that, Sanger? Now you can sleep." He turned, the light fading from his eyes, only half-aware of the startled looks from Sandy and Childe. Lowering his arms he said more softly to himself, "We can all sleep."
While searching for another newscast, Sandy bestowed a searching smile on him but murmured only,
"What — on — earth?"
He chuckled, breathing deeply as he watched the screen. "I guess we missed the best part, but we can watch again at eleven. Now, if you'll turn that thing off awhile, I'd like to tell you about a girl named Marbrye Sanger."
CHAPTER 74
Long before he had finished, Sandy knew that Sanger was the woman of whom Quantrill had only said,