Free Lord Tyger by Philip José Farmer Page A

creek. He cast back and forth, looking for tracks in the damp soil, but found none. After two hours' search, he decided that the other angel had run off in a different direction or perhaps was also dead and being stripped of flesh.
    Which of the two was the angel? Igziyabher's angels did not fight each other, so one must be a devil. Was the dead one the devil? Mariyam had said that Good always triumphs over Evil, at which Yusufu had snorted and replied, "Would we be here, living this life, if that were true? The devil rules this world, and you know it, Grandmother of Lies."
    Yusufu was always making remarks that he would not explain when Ras asked for light. "I open my mouth and the words fly out before I can catch them, my son. But a man has to say something once in a while; otherwise he goes mad."
    Ras searched for another hour or more before deciding that he would find the angel--if she were one--only by accident. By then he was beginning to think that neither of the two mightbe devils or angels. The corpse had looked so human and was so dead that there seemed to be nothing of divinity about it. The only thing that caused him doubt was that he had seen no wound on the corpse. If he had had a chance to investigate, he might have found one. But what kind of a weapon was it that left no evidence of its passage?
    On the other hand, if the yellow-haired being were an angel, why had it allowed its bird to be killed?
    It was all very puzzling, as so many things were. There were answers to all his questions, but there were so many different answers. Mariyam never stuck to the same story: Yusufu's did not vary; the Wantso girls all had the same story but theirs differed from his parents'.
    And then there was Gilluk, king of the Sharrikt, whom he had sneaked out of the Wantso village where he had been held prisoner. Ras had kept Gilluk in a cage in the jungle for six months while he learned the Sharrikt language, and then questioned him. Gilluk's answers had little resemblance to anybody else's.

5
    A LETTER FROM GOD TO THE MOON
    While the inward eyes were concentrated upon the past, the outward missed nothing of the present. As he walked to the north, he saw something white far off to the northeast, and he approached it cautiously. Now and then he stood motionless behind a tree and listened. Monkeys chattered or screamed; a tiny bird with a huge head and long, straight beak rawked as it flew over him. He became more careful the closer he got, but finally satisfied himself that the yellow-haired angel was not around. The white object was the flower below which she had descended from the bird. It had lost its shape and hung drooping, as if drained of juice, from a branch. He climbed up to touch it, and found that it was of some smooth material. There were cords of another unknown stuff hanging from it and straps attached to these.
    Ras worked the dead flower--or whatever it was--for a while before he got it untangled and folded into a bundle. He located a huge hole in a dead tree and cached the bundle init. Though he was eager to take it home and look it over more carefully, he did not want to be burdened with it at present.
    The tracks leading from beneath the tree were small and made with coverings such as he had seen on the dead being's feet. They led to one of the many streams in this area; there were none on the other bank. Ras crisscrossed the stream for several miles southeastward, then returned to the place where the tracks entered the stream and zigzagged from bank to bank northwestward.
    His belly rumbled with hunger, but he did not want to stop for a long time to hunt. He could have shot a monkey at any time now that the feathers of his arrows were dried.
    There was no time to skin and cook a monkey. Although he preferred cooked food, he could have carried the monkey along while he ate it raw. There was a time when his parents had encouraged him to eat raw meat, although they would not eat anything unless it was cooked; and