IX: SIXDAY AFTERNOON
We ate lunch under the convoluted branches of a vinetree, having left the tractor on a trail a kilometer away. Surrounding us, except for occasional clearings filled with red plants, the great vines twisted in a confusion penetrated only by paths as entwined as the trees.
Rasmussen had scarcely spoken since our debate. Toal remained icy, although the air was asphyxiating. In an effort to keep the halting conversation from the Hog, until my companions were calmer, I said, "I still don't understand how Maggiese came to look so much alike in only two hundred years."
Rasmussen grunted and chewed a bread and meat ply. Toal studied the green birds that chased through the fringed leaves of the vinetree.
I said, "I recall a few figures about heredity. The chance of any single individual being born from a union is about one in two hundred fifty million. If the parents differed in only twenty dominant genes, this individual would be one of more than a million possible variations. It's hard to produce specific humans to order.
"Say you're trying to rid a population of an undesirable trait. If twenty-five per cent of the people show the trait, and none are allowed offspring, it would still take three centuries to bring the incidence of the trait down to one per cent, because many people would carry it as a recessive characteristic. Then, mutations may be undetected for generations and upset the whole system. Joe Nordo must have—"
"There he is!" Rasmussen gasped.
"Joe Nordo?" I said stupidly.
"The Hog!" Rasmussen produced an optical instrument consisting of a small telescope for each eye. He said, "Two hundred yards off!"
I jumped up, tripped over a root, fell, crawled to my equipment, and yanked out the quadpod. I set the quadpod close to Rasmussen, lifted the robotic into position, and threw the switches to maximum. "One shot," I predicted. "Explosive pellets with nitrobenzene. Where is he?"
Rasmussen pointed. I swung the robotic and illuminated the sight. In a little clearing, the Hog rooted at a clay bank. His scaly, dull red skin hung in folds and creases about leg joints and shoulders. His straight back terminated in a twitching tail at one end and, at the other, sloped abruptly in a short neck that lowered the snout almost to the ground.
I adjusted the sight to precise focus and reached for the main switch. Something exploded close to my left ear.
"Shot the monster!" Rasmussen cried. He thrust another tube into his firearm and raised it to his shoulder. A thin puff of smoke and a second explosion burst from the barrel. "Again!" Rasmussen exulted.
"What are you doing?" I roared. "I was ready to kill him, and you started exploding that thing!"
The clearing was now empty. A nearly human squeal lingered in the warm air.
"Go find the carcass," Rasmussen said. "Am too old for hiking. The Hog did not stay long in the sun. Were too slow."
Mumbling, I pulled a ranger from my pack and swept the forest with it. I stopped. In an arbor formed by vinetree branches, I saw part of the Hog's head and forequarters at a range of 523 meters. "He's on his feet," I said.
"Where?" Rasmussen gasped.
"One shot," I promised. I jacked the robotic higher and once more focussed the sight. I threw the main switch. The weapon hummed. The barrel moved slightly upward and to the left. The robotic made a spitting noise.
Even as the thud of the exploding pellet reached us two seconds later, I was choking, "A-an antelope, or something! It jumped in front of the Hog. The pellet hit it! That's the only way a robotic can miss—if something covers the target. This is the first—"
Rasmussen laughed. "Perhaps will die from my bullets," he chuckled. "Go look for him, if not afraid. Incidentally, it is unlawful for an alien to kill game on Maggie."
I searched the trees with the ranger, but saw no life except a flock of birds disturbed by the blast. I shouldered my pack, picked up the hisser, and stalked down the hill into the vines.
Rasmussen called, "Be back in two hours. Must return before dark."
Stumbling over roots and pushing through low tunnels, I tried to reach the clearing in which the Hog had first been sighted. At a sound behind me, I whirled and almost hung myself in a looping tendril. Betty Toal, carrying a slender firearm, moved gracefully in my wake.
"What's wrong with that old man?" I snarled at her. "Is he jealous because he's the great hunter, and I'm after the Hog? I'd have killed the Hog if he hadn't ruined my first try."
Toal said, "He's proud. He's vain about his hunting. I think he hates the Hog too much to let him escape. Of course, he protested to the Jury about calling an outside hunter. Probably resents you."
"Yes," I said. "You'd best go to the tractor with him. I don't like hunting on foot in a forest. I never do it if I can use another method."
"No, you need a guide, although Ordinances 37, 38, and 42 forbid a Maggiese female to enter a forest with a male alien."
We smiled at each other. "I'm sorry about this morning," I said. "I didn't intend any insult to the memories of your family and friends. I didn't realize what the Hog had done to you."
"It's all right, Kinlock."
"We'd best go on. You'll be about as safe with me as anywhere, if the Hog circles."
"No, this way."
Toal dodged in front of me and undulated rapidly through the vines. I kept tripping and catching my head or the hisser barrel in the tendrils. We, at length, stepped through an arch into a clearing.
A horde of striped toothies swarmed around a clay bank that had been excavated until cross sections of tunnels were exposed. A hundred little eyes stared. One or two toothies even stood erect on hind feet for a better view. One rodent squeaked. Others answered. Some went into holes in the bank, and others vanished among the matted red flowers that filled the clearing.
I examined the great cloven depressions left in the damp ground by the Hog's feet. "He was rooting for toothies," I said. "The Jury claimed he has no part in this planet's bionomics, but he's checking the toothie population." I glanced at Toal and said, "Don't start glaring like that again. I'll finish the Hog for you. He's probably the only one surviving, since the Jury says he isn't—and one old boar can't carry on the species."
I followed the footsteps of the Hog across the clearing and into the silent green corridors. Infrequent glimpses of the sky revealed darkening clouds sweeping up from the horizon. Something rumbled in the distance. "Thunder," Toal said.
Soaked with perspiration generated by the humid heat and by anticipation of meeting the Hog, I tiptoed around a vine trunk and almost stepped in the mess made by the robotic pellet that should have blasted the Hog. Toal said, "A jumpalong."
The animal, a brown thing with four horns, had been blown nearly in half. The flesh around the wound had turned purple. "Stay away from it," I warned. "Nitrobenzene is potent stuff."
The Hog had departed through a tunnel of his own manufacture, penetrating the vines in a straight line for fifty meters. As I moved into the hole, lightning bathed the forest floor in green light, and thunder crackled. "Do you have rain every day all summer?" I complained.
"Yes," Toal said, "but this is only spring."
Big raindrops splattered against the canopy of leaves. I said, "Do you want to go back? A thunderstorm's not an ideal time to hunt."
"You'd have a cold trail by tomorrow. The Hog may be badly wounded."
I breathed deeply and peered down the dim tunnel. "You watch the rear," I said, whispering for some reason.
Lightning flickered through the vegetation in nerve-racking patterns. The leaves no longer turned the rain. I told myself I was unhinged to hunt the Hog, when hearing him would be impossible, but I walked slowly forward.
The Hog's tunnel broke into a path marked by his hoofs. The path curved back and forth, for about a kilometer, and led to rocky ground above a tumbling stream. I removed a folded robe from my pack, shook it out, and gave it to Toal. "Put that on," I said. "You'll be soaked if we go out there."
"But what about you?"
"I'm already wet, and very little of it's rain."
The lightning had subsided before the increasing downpour, but, as I walked from the woods, I cringed in a reflex I had acquired after seeing a man struck on a bare plain. Water ran off my sunhat and saturated my oversuit. My non-skid boots slipped on the wet rocks.
A grumbling noise reached me through the rain. I was hoping to dismiss it as thunder, but Toal said, "The Hog."
"Where is he?" I whispered. Toal shook her head. I studied the woods, then turned back to the creek. Old, decayed stumps, piles of rotting brush and limbs, and clumps of young trees spotted the ground across the stream. Gaudy flowering plants grew in broad patches of yellow, red, and orange. Beneath the pelting rain, the warm ground extruded a low, slowly swirling mist.
A shrill screech echoed distantly. The hisser jumped to my shoulder, but I saw no target. Toal said, "The tractor whistle. Rasmussen wants to go."
"He said two hours," I objected. "It hasn't been two hours."
"May think hunting is useless in the rain."
"I suppose so," I sighed. "No traces on these rocks. That mist is covering the stream. I have a sniffer, but it won't pick up much from wet ground. You lead, but, if you see the Hog, drop flat to give me a shot."
We sloshed back into the wiggling path. Again the tractor whistle shrieked. We walked faster, slipping in the mud. Somewhere, the Hog grunted. We trotted.
As we reached the tunnel in the vinetrees, Toal stopped. "Listen!" she said. "Starting the tractor! Cannot leave us!"
She ran. I splashed and slid on her track, but she had a fifty meter lead before I reached the dead jumpalong. My running slowed to a tottering shuffle. I breathed in painful wheezes, and lost my sunhat, and did not bother to retrieve it.
I panted into the clearing where we had first seen the Hog. Toal waited near the clay bank. The entrenched toothies peeped from their holes. I thought we were in the wrong place, since the red flowers were now orange, but then I saw that the rain had somehow soaked the color from them, forming red pools over the clearing.
"I lost your cape," Toal said. Her breathing was only slightly rapid, but I gasped as if I had been strangled.
The Hog grunted. He grunted five times while Toal and I stood immobile. The grunting ascended to a squealing sound like, "Kyieel uhoo! Keel uhoo! Keel oo Keenlogh!"
For the first time on Planet Maggie, I shivered with cold. "Did you, did you hear th-that?" I stuttered. "What goes on? Can the Hog actually talk?"
"Talk?"
"He said, 'Kill you, Kinlock.'"
"How could he?" Toal said. "How could he know your name?"
"He's been listening," I said. Then I snickered hysterically. "That's ridiculous. Rasmussen thinks the Hog may be a marsupial, and marsupials don't talk. He hasn't any tool-grasping organs either."
Toal slogged into the vine woods. "No use running any farther," she said. "The tractor sounds as if it's half way to Joetropolis."