THE SNOWS ARE MELTED, THE SNOWS ARE GONE

The cold silent land was lightening as the human figure walked up to the ridge. On pale rock the figure was a dark fork, too thin. Serpent-shouldered. It sank into a patch of scrub below the crest, turned a small face up to the sky, crouched again.

A shadow flitted, circling the ridge. A large dog; no, a very large wolf. The animal drifted onto the rocks above the human, froze. The stiff line of its brush showed an old break. The dawn was coming fast now, but to the west the valley was still dark. Faint howling rose from the valley,

then ceased.

The dog-wolf faded off the ridge, reappeared by the bushes where the human crouched. The figure bowed its head; as the wolf came near. Dawn light flickered on his canines. He snapped sideways, carrying away a dark cap.

A flood of light spilled out, flew as the human tossed it back. The wolf dropped the cap, sat down and began to worry at something on its chest.

Daylight sprang up the sky. In the niche below the rocks the figure was now clearly visible, a young girl in rough jacket and breeches, shaking out her hair. The shoulders of her jacket ended in pads. It had no arms. Nor had she, none at all. A phocomorph. She settled herself beside the wolf, who showed now as bulge-headed with oddly curling fur.

He had drawn out a small object which lay between them on the rock. They were face to face, dawn glinting yellow from his eyes, blue in the girl’s. His paw went to the object, clicked.

“Patrol to base,” the girl said softly.

Tiny squeak of reply.

“We’re at the ridge. The river’s about five kilometers west. There’s a trail below us, it hasn’t been used since the rains. We heard the dogs. We’ll wait here till dark, after that we’ll be in radio shadow. We’ll signal when we’re out, maybe night after next.”

Louder squeaking, a woman’s voice. Wolf jaws widened, girllips grinned,

“We always take care. Patrol out.”

The wolf clicked off and then bent and delicately gripped her boot tip in his teeth. The armless girl pulled her foot free, flexed her slim prehensile toes in the cold light. When the other boot came off she used her toes to unhitch the pack harness from his dense fur. He stretched hugely, flung himself down and rolled, revealing a rich cream underbelly.

The girl toed out a food pack and canteen. He got up and carried it to a spring beside the outcrop, pawing it under to fill. They ate and drank, the girl lying on her back and dangling the canteen over her face by its strap. Once she let out a gurgle of laughter. His paw struck her head, pushed her face into her knees. They finished eating, went to relieve themselves. It was broad daylight now, the sun sailing straight up from the eastern hills as if on a wire. A wind rose with it, keening over the rocky rim.

The wolf belly-crawled to the crest, watched awhile, returned to the girl. They pulled brush around themselves and curled together on the laterite shelf.

The sun mounted, struck through the wind’s chill. No bird flew, no furred animal appeared. In the brush tangle, silence. Once a mantis-like thing rattled near the lair. A yellow eye opened at ground level. The thing whirred away, the eye closed.

During the afternoon the wind carried a thin cawing sound to the outcrop. In the brush yellow eyes were joined by blue. The murmur faded, the eyes disappeared again. Nothing more happened. The equatorial sun dropped straight down the west into the valley, quieting the wind.

As shadow flowed over the outcrop the brush was pulled aside. Girl and wolf came out together to the stream and lapped, she bending like a snake. They ate again, and the girl toed the pack together, fastened it to the wolf’s harness. He nosed the transmitter into its pouch in his chest wool and picked up a boot for her to thrust her foot in. When she was shod he hooked a fang into the dark cap. She let her pale hair coil into it and he pulled it over her head, adjusting it carefully away from her eyes. It was dark now, a quarter-moon behind them in the east. She twisted to her feet, a human spring, and they set off down the escarpment into the valley.

Arid scrubland eroded by old floods became forest as they descended. The pair moved watchfully in single file, following a vague trail down. When the moon had passed zenith they halted to carry out laborious rearrangements of brush and stones. Then they went on down through the trees, halted again to labor. Trails branched here; when they moved on it was with greater care. Faint odors were in this air.

The moon was setting ahead of them when they reached the ruined river gorge. Beyond the rocks a broad sheet of silver muttered in the night. They crossed at a riffle, climbed a rock ledge, moved quietly downstream. The scent was a stench now—smoke, fish, bodies, excrement, coming from a bend around the crags. A dog’s howl rose was joined by another, cut off in yelps.

Girl and wolf came on the crags. Below them were three ragged thatches huddled in a cove. Smoke rose from a single ash pile. The huts were in shadow. A last moonray silvered a pile of offal by the shore.

The two on the crag watched silently. It was warmer here, but no insect flew. In the huts below a child whimpered, was silenced. Nothing visited the offal pile. The moon set, the river turned dark. A fish splashed.

The wolf rose, drifted away. The girl listened to the river. He returned and she followed him upriver to a high cranny in the ledges out of sight of the cove. In the river below the water gurgled around a line of crazy stakes. The two ate and drank in silence. When the world lightened they were curled together in sleep.

Sunlight struck their wall, shadows shrank to the east. From the cove came the shrilling of children, deeper voices. A clatter, a cry. In the high cranny, sunlight reflected yellow glints behind dry weeds. The wind was rising, blowing toward the sun across the river. Between the gusts came snarls, chirrupings, undecipherable shouts, the crackle of fire. The eyes waited.

In midmorning two naked women came around the bend below, dragging something along the shore. Seven more straggled after, paused to gesture and jabber. Their skin was angry red, pale at crotch and armpits. White scars stood out, symmetrical chevrons on the bulging bellies. All had thick, conelike nipples; two of them appeared close to term. Their hair was matted, rusty-streaked.

Above on the crags, blue eyes had joined yellow. The women were wading into the river now, their burden revealed as a crude net which they proceeded to string between the stakes. They shrieked at each other, “Weh weh! Ee, ah!” A small flock of children was drifting around the bend. Several of the larger children carried babies. “Eee! Gah!” they echoed, high-voiced. A stake collapsed, was retrieved with shrieks, would not stand, was abandoned.

Presently larger figures appeared on the shore path. The man. Six of them, naked and ruddy like the women but much more scarred. None was beyond first youth. The smallest was dark, all the others had carroty hair and beards. Behind them trailed three dogs, tail-tucked, ready to flee.

The men shouted imperiously and walked on upriver. The women came out of the water and trotted after them. At the next bend the whole party waded in and commenced to splash and flail, driving the fish down to the nets. A baby screamed. The pair on the rocks Watched, intent.

One of the men noticed the dogs skulking by the net and hurled a stone. They raced away, turned, crept back. This man was the largest of the group, active and well-formed. As the splashing people neared the nets the big man looked ahead, saw the gap in the nets and ran along on the shore to pull it taut. On the cliff above, wolf eyes met human. Wolf teeth made a tiny click.

The fish were foaming in the nets now. The humans closed upon them, hauling at the nets, fish sluicing and leaping through, dogs splashing in to snap. Shouts, screams, floundering bodies. They dragged the squirming mass ashore, dropped it to grab at escaping fish. The young giant stood erect, grinning, biting alternately at a fish in each hand. At his feet children scrambled in the threshing nets. He gave a loud wordless shout, threw the fish high.

Finally the women dragged the catch away along the shore path to the huts and the river was empty again. Girl and wolf stretched, lay down unrelaxed. Smoke blew around the bend. If was hot in the rocks now, out of the wind. Below on the sand fish-parts glittered but no flies appeared. From the cove, silence; interrupted briefly by a child’s wail. The sun was dropping toward the valley run, shadows spreading on the river below. The wind followed the sun away.

Presently dusk filled the canyon and the sky turned lilac behind a half-moon. A column of smoke was rising from the cove. In the stillness voices pealed singly, became a rhytmic chorus underlaid with pounding. This continued for a time, interspersed with shouts, bursts of shrieking. The smoke column wavered, gouted sparks. More shrieks, general clamor. The uproar died to grumbles, then to silence. The rocks ticked in the night chill.

The wolf left the cranny. The girl sighed, remained. Around the bend a dog began to howl, squealed and was still. The girl toed intricate patterns in a patch of sand. The wolf returned wet-legged, and they ate and drank. While the moon set they slept.

Before dawn they had left that place and circled back across the river to the side on which they had entered the valley. The canyon wall was eroded to a tumble here. The two went slowly several times between shore and rocks as the sky paled. Finally they sat down to wait at the water’s edge behind a screen of alders. Across the river were the huts.

When light struck into the canyon the girl rose and faced the wolf. Her jacket wrapped her waist, ended in a wide loop. He caught one tooth in the loop, flicked it free and had the jacket open. Beneath the jacket she was bare. She stood patiently while he nosed the jacket back across her shoulders like a cape. Her shoulders were smooth scarless knobs above her small breasts. The cold air puckered her pink nipples, stirred the little beards of silk in what should have been her armpits.

The wolf was laying the folds of jacket so that they mimicked arms. Satisfied, he jerked his big head and then began to tug at the flexible waistband of her breeches, drawing them down deftly to expose her body and upper thighs. As he worked she began to smile, moved. He growled faintly. The wind blew on her bareness. She leaned against his warm fur. They waited.

Sounds were coming from the thatches across the river. Figures appeared, ambling down to the shore to stand or squat. Girl and wolf watched an alder grove across the river to one side of the huts. Presently the foliage was agitated. A man was coming through. Wolf-head nodded; it was the big one. The man appeared moving familiarly along a sand spit, and stood to urinate.

Carefully the wolf drew back a low branch. The girl took an awkward pace forward, putting her naked body in full sunlight. The man’s head swung, fixed on her. His body tensed. She gave a low call, swaying herself.

Muscles surged in the man’s legs, his feet spurned sand. Instantly the branch thrashed back around her and the wolf was yanking up her breeches, tugging her jacket around. Then they were running, pelting through the alders, racing out of the river bottom on the line toward their trail.

Splashing behind them turned upstream. The wolf had chosen well, there was a deep basin which the man must get around to reach their shore. They bounded up the bluff, the girl agile as a hare. When they were out of the canyon the wolf veered into the trees.

The man came over the bluff to see the girl running alone up the tunnellike path far ahead. He plunged after her, strong legs, eating space. But she was at the electric age for running, child-thin and trained hard. When he slowed after his first burst she was going tirelessly, a peculiar weaving motion of her torso making up the balance for missing arms. As she ran her eyes roamed in search of the slashes they had left upon the trees beside the trail.

Suddenly there were new voices behind her—the dogs had joined the chase. The girl frowned, speeded up. A big gray shadow swerved alongside, stopped with lifted leg beside a tree, then another. The girl smiled, let her pace slow.

Shortly she heard the dogs’ voices change when they came to the wolf-sign. Shouts from the man, yelps. No more sound of dogs.

She ran on. It was trot and trot now uphill, with the sun towering to noon. She was panting hard when she came to the first of the places they had arranged. She leaped aside, glimpsing a gray form among the trees, and jogged on up the rising ground.

Behind her came a sharp yell and then the grunts and flounder of the bogged man. She leaned against a dead termitary. The trees were thinning here, the wind blew through to carry her tiredness away.

The wolf appeared, jerked his head irritably. She turned and trotted on into the wind. Over the treetops she could see the blue line of rimrock far ahead. Trot and trot. The man held her in view now and he was gaining.

Finally she swerved again and heard behind her the crack of breaking branches and the angry shout. When she paused the wolf was by her. They listened together to the sounds of struggle coming through the fading gusts of wind. She resumed of her own accord, knowing now that she could not outrun him. The wolf remained, watchful.

The sun was yellowing into the horizon’s dust when she topped the final ridge and turned to look. This was the limit of the wild-men’s trails; would he follow on beyond? She could hear nothing. The wolf appeared, motioning her to a sunlit ledge. He butted her into position with his nose and pulled her jacket apart. She sang out a sweet trill, ending in laughter.

As the echo died the wolf pushed her running down the rocks past their old camping place. In a moment he joined her, grinning toothily, and then vanished to one side while she jogged on alone across the unrolling shadows. When she glanced behind a ruddy figure was bobbing down the rocks. No dogs were with him.

Shadows pooled underfoot, became twilight around her as they ran. Twilight turned to moonlight; the wolf ranged ahead of her, his crooked tail held high; and she followed its flag across the plain. This was old goat land, knobbed with clumps of thorn trees whose young were springing up everywhere now that the goats were gone.

Presently the wolf let her slow to walking, pausing now and again to listen for the footfalls behind. No other sound was here.

At last they halted. He drifted back silent as fog, to return briskly and lead her to a thorn clump. Here she freed her feet and drank and ate greedily and drank again while he inspected and licked her feet. But he would not let her unharness him, nor release her hair, and he made her put her boots on before he got out the transmitter.

“We’ve got one. He’s very strong. Is Bonz all right?”

Questions rattled at them. The wolf cut off and pushed the girl’s body earthward into the dry thorn chaff. Then he removed himself from her warm odors and leaped up an ant castle to lie facing back the way they had come. His head, sunk onto his crossed paws, showed a fine tremor. One yellow eye was open under the heavy brow. After a time his withers jerked, were still.

The sounds forced from his throat reached her in the night but her sleep was deep. She found him spasming at the base of the ant castle, the great jaws throwing slaver in the moonlight. She flung herself onto the writhing neck, clamping her thighs along his head to force her knees between his teeth. He bucked, screamed. The fangs clashed, caught in the ridge of padding fitted inside both her knees. She held his mouth open as they rolled, a dark stain spreading on her leg. He had already slashed his tongue, she could not see how badly.

When the synchrony passed she released him, crouched murmuring over his head. His tongue ceased bleeding. Slowly his nictitating membranes retracted and the moonlight lit green ghostfire in his open eyes. He lifted his head. She nuzzled him, then pushed. He sighed and put his nose to his chest fur. A vial was harnessed there. He worried out a bolus, gulped. Then he got up, walked stiffly away. There was water nearby. When he returned she was asleep; he left her and leaped heavily up to his post.

Dawn showed them to be on an amba, a high tableland backed by a turreted line of cliffs. These cliffs were their goal, but there was the empty plain to cross. The girl was well out upon it, trotting alone, when the man’s figure appeared around an outcrop. He wavered, ready to turn back. But then the sight of his prey gripped him and he was racing hard on her trail.

She speeded up and held the space between them almost constant for a kilometer before he began to gain. She forced her legs. It was wind against wind now across the barren amba. The amba was sliced with deep gullies. As her speed failed she was able to take advantage of the remembered course, doubling to lure him into hidden ravines. At two of the deepest cuts she found the wolf waiting for her and crossed by springing to hiw back where her pursuer would have to clamber up and down.

But for all she could do the man gained steadily. Between gusts of wind she heard the slap and pound of his hard feet. She was gasping when she reached the tumbled hummocks at the foot of the crags. He was close, closer. She leaped desperately up the rocks, remembering the stone that had been flung at the dog. How far could that powerful strange limb propel a missile? She could only dodge upward with searing lungs, all her hopes focused on the tunnel.

That was the crucial part. If he should know these cliffs!

But he was coming straight up after her, not stopping to throw, closing fast. Gravel rattled. She could hear his grunts above her own breathing. He was only paces behind now.

Suddenly shadow was ahead—the old culvert mouth. A rope loop hung inside. She flung her weight into it, spun dizzily for an instant. Then everything gave and she struck ground in a rain of dirt. At her heels, the rockslide cascaded into the culvert, walled him out.

She panted for a time in the choking darkness and then started up the culvert’s floor. It was steep; she scrabbled, sprawled, pushing herself up on her shoulder pads. This was an old skill; as an infant she had rubbed her shoulders raw. Presently there was gray light above. The wolf’s head was waiting for her at the top.

She emerged onto the old road bed and they went together to look over the brink of the cliff. It was blowing hard here. She leaned against him as they peered down.

Far below, a red figure worked at the rocks before the culvert. The cliff between them hung sheer, he could not get up this way. The girl sighed, grinned, still breathing hard. She nosed the wolf’s back, found the canteen mouth and sucked. He whined softly, open-mouthed.

They went again through the ritual of exposing her body. As he dragged down her breeches she giggled. He growled and nipped at her belly. Then he reared up and pulled off the cap to let the blonde silk blow free.

She advanced to the cliff edge, called into the wind. A red face turned up to her. Its mouth opened. She motioned with her head, stepped to her left. In that direction the roadway had been breached by a rockslide, leaving a moraine he could climb.

He left off staring and mouthing and began to circle toward the moraine, stopping often to look up. She paced along above him until rocks came between.

Then the wolf dressed her peremptorily and sent her staggering down the road in the other direction, away from the man. She took up a steady jog, going northwest now with the sun and the wind in her face. Soon the old highway left the cliffs and cut inward between wind-sliced turrets. There were higher crests beyond these to her right, the hills that had once been called Harar. Then she was past the outcrops. The road stretched straight across another mesa top. There were ruins here, adobe shells, ditches, littered yards under occasional huge eucalyptus trees. Metal fragments lay on the roadside. A rusted gas pump stood like a man as she jogged by. Dust blew. She was beginning to limp.

Now and then the wolf ranged alongside her, then slipped aside to watch her pursuer pass. The man was on the straight behind her now, coming on doggedly, veering from the strange shapes by the road. Pursuer and pursued slowed to walking as the light began to change. The distance between them shrank steadily, faster.

The girl was hobbling when she reached a ravine where the road lay in wreckage. A little time gained here, but not much; She was spent. Beyond the wrecked bridge she limped between walls. The road curved around a dead village, ran into an old square. Here the girl turned aside and fell to her knees. Behind her the man was already leaping through the fallen bridge. It was sunset. The wolf appeared, grunting urgently. She shook her head, panted. He snarled and began to yank at her clothing, shouldering her up.

When the man came into the square she was standing alone, her body brilliant in the level light. He stopped, eyes rolling white at the alien walls. Then he took a step toward her and was suddenly in charging onrush. She stood quiet. He leaped, arms grappling her, and she went down under him into the hard dirt.

As they fell together a jet of gas came from between her lips into his face. He convulsed, crushed her. The wolf was on them, dragging the flailing giant off by the arm while the girl coughed and gagged. When the man had flopped to inertness the wolf pounched over her and nosed her head.

Her gagging changed timbre, she wrapped both legs around the wolf and tried to roll him. He roughed her face with his tongue, planted his paw in her navel and pulled free. When she quieted he was holding the transmitter in front of her face. A snoring noise was coming from the man on the ground.

They looked together at the big body. He was nearly twice the wolf’s weight.

“If we tie him to you and drag him he’ll get all torn,” the girl said. “Do you think you can drive him?”

The wolf laid the transmitter down and grunted non-committally, frowning at the man.

“We’re only at that place west of Goba,” the girl told the transmitter. “I’m sorry. He’s much stronger than we thought. You—wait!”

The wolf was in the road, standing tense. She listened too, heard nothing... then a shiver in the ground, a tiny rumble. The transmitter began to squawk.

“It’s all right!” the girl told it. “Bonz is here!”

“What do you mean, Bonz is there?” demanded the distant voice.

“We can hear him coming. He must have got through the break.”

“Damn idiots,” said the voice. “You’re all wasting energy. Base out.”

Girl and wolf squatted together in the dusk beside the snoring man. She prodded at him briefly with her booted foot. Her teeth began to chatter.

The throbbing turned into a clashing roar and a fan of light swung around the far end of the square. Behind the light was the dark nub of a small tractor cab. It was towing a flat wagon.

The girl stood up, swung her hair.

“Bonz! Bonz, we’ve got one!”

The tractor rattled up beside them and a pale head leaned out. The dashlight showed a boy’s face, a bony knife-edged version of the girl’s.

“Where is he?”

“Here. Look how big he is!”

The tractor’s light swung, flooded the supine man.

“You’ll have to get him on the wagon,” the boy said. His eyes were hollow with fatigue. He made no move to leave the cab.

The wolf was at the side wall of the wagon, pulling a latch. The wall clanged down to form a ramp to the low cart bed. Girl and wolf began to roll the red body sideways toward the ramp.

“Wait,” the boy said suddenly. “Don’t hurt him. What have you done to him?”

“He’s all right,” the girl told him. The man’s shoulders were lolling against her knees, his upper arm slashed red where the wolf had gripped him.

“Wait, let me look,” said the boy. He still did not get out but sat staring, Licking his thin lips.

“Our savior.” His voice was harsh and high. “There’s your damned Y chromosome. He’s filthy.”

He pulled his head back and they tumbled the unconscious man up onto the cart. There were hasps and straps on the floor. The girl’s boots were got off and she fastened him down, her bruised toes clumsy. As they got him secure he began to groan. The girl pulled back her lips to reveal the syringe fastened between teeth and cheek and carefully jetted more vapor on his face.

The boy watched them through his rear window, twisted in his seat. He was drinking from a canteen. On the wagon the girl unhitched her companion’s harness pack and they ate and drank too. They grinned at the boy. He did not grin back. His eyes were on the great red-gold man:

The girl toed him idly, jostling his thick limbs, his genitals.

“Don’t do that!” the boy called sharply. The air was cold.

“Do you think he needs a blanket?” asked the girl.

“No! Yes,” he said exhaustedly.

When the wolf reared up beside the cab door the boy was bent over, hauling blankets from behind his seat. The cab’s interior was cluttered with tubing and levers. On the floor, where the boy’s feet should have been, was an apparatus from which tubes led upward. When he straightened up it could be seen that he had no legs. His torso was strapped to the seat and ended in a cocoon of canvas into which tubing led. His face was wet-streaked.

“We can all go die, now,” he pushed the blankets out the window, ramming with sinewy arms. Wetness ran down his thin jaw, fell on the blanket. The girl peered around the side, said nothing. The wolf grabbed a double fold of blanket and slung the rest back over his shoulder as he dropped to all fours. The boy hung his arms around the steering wheel and let his head go down.

Girl and wolf covered the man on the cart and fastened up its side. He draped a blanket on her, leaped to the ground. The boy’s head came up. He started the tractor and they lurched out onto the road. Above them no bat flew, no night bird hunted, here or anywhere in the empty world. Only the tractor moved across the moonlit plain, a gray beast trotting behind. Ho insects came to the yellow headlight beam. Before them the road stretched away neutrally to the crests above the Rift, in the land that had been Ethiopia.