The path from the muzzle of the weapon to its target was quite short, only a few feet.
A sudden, black, startling, seared, cavelike hole appeared, as if by magic, in the beast’s chest. This hole seemed ringed in the first instant in a blastlike blaze of fire and light, roaring, incandescent, and torrential. Rocks were gouged out of the ceiling, and showered down behind the platform.
Brenner looked up at the beast. It had not yet fallen. It seemed very still. It was slumped down a bit but, on the whole, retained its sitting position. Perhaps it does not even know, or understand, that it has been hit, thought Brenner. The strike had been made quickly, in a sudden, brief stream of fire, almost a flash of light. It may not understand what has occurred, thought Brenner. It seemed to sit there, the hole smoking, the hair about it burnt away, in its chest. The opening had been made so quickly, so cleanly, that it seemed possible, for a wild instant, to Brenner, that the charge, in its heat, might have cauterized the very wound it made. But then, a moment later, its fur was drenched with blood.
Fall, die, die, thought Brenner. Die, he thought, die!
For a moment he was afraid of it, that it might move toward him. Even in its moments of death such a thing could be terrible.
But it did not move toward him.
It was no longer dangerous.
Brenner, sick, let the rifle slip from his fingers.
The beast lowered its head. It half rose. Its legs seemed uncertain beneath it.
It must fall, thought Brenner. It must die! Are you so hard to kill, mighty beast? Are you so unwilling to die? Do you cling to life with such force, with such tenacity?
Blood then came from about the jaws of the beast. It licked it, running its tongue about its jaws.
Its belly was now almost on the platform.
It looked at Brenner.
“Who are you?” suddenly cried Brenner. “What are you?”
“I am the father,” it said.
“He is dead!” squealed a Pon.
“He is dead! He is dead!” cried others.
Suddenly, then, from all about Brenner, there were howls, and leapings about, and shrieks of glee. The Pons, in their white robes, and those in the gray robes, were suddenly intermixed, jostling one another, striking and pulling at one another. Yes, thought Brenner, those raucous, pleased sounds, they must be laughter, or triumph. But how chilling, how maniacal, now seemed what might once have been a mere ventilation of emotion or tension. Brenner saw several Pons tearing off their robes. Some Pons were leaping about now, naked, making menacing sounds, presumably imitative of those of the totem beast. Others were making such sounds, but were moving about, too, in a sort of dance, imitating the movements of the totem beast, its prowlings, it climbings, its charges, even its stretchings and yawns. Many others, dancing about, whirling in their robes, in frenzy, brandished the tiny, polished, wicked scarps in their hands. Brenner would not have cared to walk too close to one.
Brenner felt sick.
The beast was dead. It lay now in its blood on the platform. The blood ran from the platform, and over the floor. In such a thing was much blood. The beast was dead. Brenner had killed it. It was dead, the beast, the ancestor, the primal father, the father, the totem.
Brenner saw one of the male Pons seize a female and pull off her robes. Others, males and females, shrieked with delight. Brenner wondered if this were because the female was not popular, or because she was, to a Pon, attractive, or, perhaps, that it was merely that she was a female, and at hand. The female tried to pull away but the male gave her a sharp bite on the back of the neck and, immediately, with a cry of pain, she crouched down at his feet, whimpering, in a cowering posture. When he turned away from her, she hurried to follow him. He treated another female in the same way, but this one, perhaps more intelligent, or not desiring to be so painfully served as had been her sister, instantly performed the submission behavior. And then the two of them crept after the male, sometimes baring their tiny teeth at one another. Then another male came and seized one of them by the hand and pulled her toward him. She shrieked. The original male and the new male, thrusting the female