It was like a tableau from Dante. The near-empty cage-clearing inside the circle of trailers; the two men, facing each other silently, their clothes and hair rippled by the shrieking gale; the boiling sky above; the twisting wheatfields in the background, like damned souls bending to the whip of Lucifer.
"It's time, Jason," Mr. Legere said, his words flayed across the clearing by the wind.
Mr. Indrasil's wildly whipping hair lifted around the livid scar across the back of his neck. His fists clenched, but he said nothing. I could almost feel him gathering his will, his life force, his id. It gathered around him like an unholy nimbus.
And, then, I saw with sudden horror that Mr. Legere was unhooking Green Terror's breezeway -- and the back of the cage was open!
I cried out, but the wind ripped my words away.
The great tiger leaped out and almost flowed past Mr. Legere. Mr. Indrasil swayed, but did not run. He bent his head and stared down at the tiger.
And Green Terror stopped.
He swung his huge head back to Mr. Legere, almost turned, and then slowly turned back to Mr. Indrasil again. There was a terrifyingly palpable sensation of directed force in the air, a mesh of conflicting wills centered around the tiger. And the wills were evenly matched.
I think, in the end, it was Green Terror's own will -- his hate of Mr. Indrasil -- that tipped the scales.
The cat began to advance, his eyes hellish, flaring beacons. And. something strange began to happen to Mr. Indrasil. He seemed to be folding in on himself, shriveling, accordioning. The silk-shirt lost shape, the dark, whipping hair became a hideous toadstool around his collar.
Mr. Legere called something across to him, and, simultaneously, Green Terror leaped.
I never saw the outcome. The next moment I was slammed flat on my back, and the breath seemed to be sucked from my body. I caught one crazily tilted glimpse of a huge, towering cyclone funnel, and then the darkness descended.
When I awoke, I was in my cot just aft of the grainery bins in the all-purpose storage trailer we carried. My body felt as if it had been beaten with padded Indian clubs.
Chips Baily appeared, his face lined and pale. He saw my eyes were open and grinned relievedly. "Didn't know as you were ever gonna wake up. How you feel?"
"Dislocated," I said. "What happened? How'd I get here?"
"We found you piled up against Mr. Indrasil's trailer. The tornado almost carried you away for a souvenir, m'boy."
At the mention of Mr. Indrasil, all the ghastly memories came flooding back. "Where is Mr. Indrasil? And Mr. Legere?"
His eyes went murky, and he started to make some kind of an evasive answer.
"Straight talk," I said, struggling up on one elbow. "I have to know, Chips. I have to."
Something in my face must have decided him. "Okay. But this isn't exactly what we told the cops -- in fact we hardly told the cops any of it. No sense havin' people think we're crazy. Anyhow, Indrasil's gone. I didn't even know that Legere guy was around."
"And Green Tiger?"
Chips' eyes were unreadable again. "He and the other tiger fought to death."
"Other tiger? There's no other ---"
"Yeah, but they found two of 'em, lying in each other's blood. Hell of a mess. Ripped each other's throats out."
"What -- where --"
"Who knows? We just told the cops we had two tigers. Simpler that way." And before I could say another word, he was gone.
And that's the end of my story -- except for two little items. The words Mr. Legere shouted just before the tornado hit: "When a man and an animal live in the same shell, Indrasil, the instincts determine the mold!"
The other thing is what keeps me awake nights. Chips told me later, offering it only for what it might be worth. What he told me was that the strange tiger had a long scar on the back of its neck.