XIII: SEVENDAY AFTERNOON
The Baby Maggie River, three hundred meters wide, gurgled and splashed over water-pocked rocks in its race to reach the Joe Junior Swamp and filter through to the sea. The cliffs, a ragged wall of dark gray rock tilted until the strata were vertical, lined the opposite bank.
Toal and I stood at the end of a track passing down between high rocks to the river. Here the pontoon bridge had once spanned the current. For two square kilometers around us, the trees had been cut and not replanted. The place was a depressing scene of gulleys, brush, stumps, and decaying limbs and sticks. A species of thorny, creeping vine with blue-green foliage predominated in reclaiming the devastated woodland.
"Surely the Hog didn't swim," Toal said.
Dehydrated and soaked with perspiration that would not evaporate, I mopped my streaming face with my sleeve. "He must have left the trail somewhere," I said.
We had again failed to find the hisser near the vinetree, but the Hog's hoofprints, usually following paths and roads, had led us to the river. I unreeled the cable of the sniffer until its nose dangled just above the ground. With the dial in my hand, I explored the edge of the road.
"That brush heap looks broken," Toal said.
I walked in the direction that she pointed. A labyrinth of stone lay along the bank. Heat waves simmered over the ground, and my feet burned in spite of thick boot soles. I reached the brush. The dial of the sniffer lighted, and the needle turned to the right. "We're on!" I said. "There's more blood. He was still bleeding after running this far. He must be dead, after all. You stay there with the pentacycle, and—"
"Had this argument yesterday," said Toal. "I'll bring part of the dynamite and go with you."
Following the pointing needle, I tripped along through the brush. Dry sticks popped under my feet, and the creepers quickly reduced my oversuit legs to rags. The trail angled across a bend in the river and moved into the shade of a vinetree grove. At first, there was open space between the trees, so that we again reached the river without difficulty. Small holes dotted the dirt beneath an overhanging rock. Toothies swarmed in and out of the burrows and squeaked excitedly.
"Some dynalene might help here," I said. "These things will eat this peninsula bare some day."
"Dynamite," Toal said. "Let them."
The sniffer led us deeper into the vine grove. The round, fringed leaves meshed into a roof that stopped the sunlight and left us walking in a sickly, greenish gloom. Abruptly, the leaves closed down to the earth, forming a rough wall of vegetation across the woods. The mouth of a tunnel opened in the mass.
Toal whispered, "The Hog goes to the swamp through there. We set traps at other tunnels. He always avoided them. It's black as a cave inside."
The sniffer pointed directly to the tunnel. Cloven hoofs had indented the ground. I said, "You go back, and—"
"No! I'll throw dynamite."
"All right. Be careful where you throw it." I grinned sickly. "Is there any way around these vines?"
"Could circle to cleared ground. Would only lead to the swamp. Can't walk in the swamp."
I put the sniffer in my pack and clipped the light to my belt. I tiptoed into the tunnel. Toal followed.
The ground was slippery underfoot, and the amount of light filtering through the massed leaves swiftly lessened. The tunnel curved gently from side to side. One hundred meters from the entrance, I could not see and turned on the light.
The Hog grunted. The ground vibrated.
Raising the heavy firearm to my shoulder, I waited. "Keenlogh!" the Hog squealed. The sound of his breathing reached me. The oily stench of him came through the tunnel.
Pausing between each step to listen, I moved forward. The tunnel twisted sharply and then branched. Each branch again divided. The Hog grunted, "Huh, huh, huh, huh!"
I moved to the right toward the sound. Down the leafy corridor, a red spot glittered. It blinked from sight before I could aim.
I reached another branch in the tunnel, and my light chose that moment to go out. I stood in total darkness, remembering that I had failed to install a new generator.
"Go back," I whispered in terrified accents. "Light's gone. Toal?"
"Here."
"Go back." Walking sideways, I began a fumbling withdrawal. I brushed against the invisible vines, slipped, and almost fell. "Keep together," I said. "Are you there, Toal?"
I retreated about twenty more steps and said, "Grab my belt, or we'll be separated."
Toal did not answer. The Hog did. He squealed, "Toooaaal!"
"Toal!" I yelled.
"Over here," she said from a distance. "Where are you?"
The Hog crashed and grunted along the tunnel. I found myself running through the darkness toward a dim, green patch. "Hide, Toal!" I called. I did not pass her. I reached a part of the tunnel in which I could see. I heard the Hog behind me, but did not look back.
Sprinting as if I were a good runner in splendid condition, I reached the open grove. I stopped and turned. The Hog emerged from the wall of vines. Coagulated blood caked his neck and head. His single usable eye blinked in the light. He charged, but he took evasive action, swerving to either side.
In my excitement and unfamiliarity with the weapon, I pulled both triggers of the firearm. The twin barrels discharged with a deafening blast. The recoil knocked me down. A vine burst where the projectiles passed through it.
The Hog galloped over me. One sharp hoof brushed my face. As the Hog turned, I practically ran up a vinetree.
Ten meters above the ground, I sat in the springy branches and breathed hoarsely. The Hog sniffed, twisted his short neck, and fixed his eye on me. "Eet oo, Keenlogh!" he grunted.
The Hog struck at the vine trunk with his forefeet. Rearing slightly and raising his front legs, he worked his way up the vines until his body, which must have weighed nearly fourteen metric tons, stood at a sixty degree angle. The vines bent and cracked. The Hog's three whole tusks gnashed close to my feet.
I crawled higher and found a vine rope hanging over open ground and leading to another trunk. Dangling first from one hand and then the other, I started across. My arms were ready to pull loose, before I reached the other vinetree and clamped myself to it. The Hog had difficulty in once more putting all feet on the dirt.
Through an opening, I glimpsed the deforested area where we had left the pentacycle. I could see Toal nowhere, nor could I now see the tunnel.
The Hog approached my new refuge, but, instead of rearing, began tearing at the thick stems with his tusks. I became aware that my face bled where his hoof had brushed it.
The Hog worked energetically, ripping and rooting. His armored sides heaved with his panting. He sweated profusely, and the end of his ugly snout dripped with moisture.
The trunks supporting me sagged. I tried to devise some plan, some sure method of escape, but my mind was a panicky jumble. Then I recalled that boring booklet, Initial Experiments in Earthian Swine (Sus scrofa) Production on Freesphere. The Hog was not of Sus scrofa, but he had similar traits. And I had no other plan.
"Yaaa!" I yelled. "You stinking pig! Climb up! I'll kick your snout off!"
The Hog rumbled, backed off, and then ran forward. He lifted his forequarters into the air and smashed into the tangle, temporarily trapping himself. I almost fell from the swaying vines. I climbed down past one of the Hog's protruding feet and dropped to the ground.
I looked for the firearm I had lost, but the Hog was breaking loose. I turned and ran the other way, out of the grove, past the toothie colony, and away from the river toward the open field.
I trotted into the wilderness of rocks, stumps, brush, and creepers. Joe's Sun seared my head, which no longer wore a cap. Heat waves quivered across the blighted land. Heat simmered from exposed rocks. I looked back to see the Hog emerging from the trees.
Faster, I ran, jumping gullies and struggling through patches of thorny creepers. Already I regretted trusting my stiffened muscles and poor running ability to this race. The Hog pursued with incredible speed for an animal his size.
I tried to hurdle a rock, struck the top with one foot, and rolled down a slope. When I again ran, one knee did not function well. My lungs burned, and I made sounds like the tractor.
The Hog had closed the distance between us to twenty meters. He panted loudly, and his whole body glinted wetly.
For agonizing minutes, I moved at the fastest gait I could muster, but it seemed slower than walking. At the top of a low hill, I saw the pentacycle not more than one hundred meters away.
When I started down the slope, the Hog's wheezing warned me. Abruptly, I changed direction. The great boar brushed past me. He staggered down the gentle hill. Spasms jerked his huge body. By the time he had turned, I had flanked him, and, burning unsuspected energy, I ran for the parked pentacycle.
The hog charged, almost blindly, forcing me toward the rocks beside the river. The rocks were incinerators in the heat of Joe's Sun. The hot ground burned through my boots. I flopped into a narrow gap. The Hog sniffed at the opening, then moved away. I crawled into the warm shade of an overhanging boulder and lay groaning and gasping.
Swaying in the blazing sunlight, the Hog vomited. He collapsed ponderously on his side. His legs twitched. He struggled to raise his massive head, but his snout fell in the dirt.
I crawled out of the rocks and reeled toward the pentacycle. A toothie scooted from beside the front wheel, and two others watched from the concealment of a creeper.
Several times, I had heard that the Hog seldom stayed in the sunlight, and the booklet, Initial Experiments in Earthian Swine (Sus scrofa) Production on Freesphere, had said that swine were susceptible to heatstroke. I trembled at the risk I had taken, but I felt a sense of peace I had not known on Planet Maggie.
One thousand x-tops, fifty coupons, the Jury would pay me for killing the Hog, the last animal I would kill for money. My hunting career had reached a successful end. An unhectic life on Mother Earth awaited me.
I suspected that I was becoming delirious in the heat. When I reached the pentacycle, I opened the dynamite box and took one tube in each hand. The tubes were fitted with time fuses.
The Hog breathed spasmodically. I warily neared the heaving mountain of flesh, uncertain of the dynamite's power, but calculating that two detonations near the creature's head would be enough.
Opening his one good eye, the Hog looked at me. His tusks grated together. Weak noises came from his mouth. "Uhdoo nuut keel!"
Sixday evening, I had been momentarily convinced that the Hog could speak, but had found it hard to accept that faculty in a swinish animal without grasping organs. However, appearance did not always indicate intellectual ability, and the Hog's skull contained ample space for a large brain. Today, now that I recalled his noises, I knew he had again threatened to eat me.
"Uhdoo nut keel, Keenlogh," the Hog grunted. He seemed to be asking for his life.
Perhaps I did not feel so strange as would a man who had never conversed with a nonhuman intelligence. Two of my close friends were Triangularians. I said, "What can I do but kill you? You helped kill 238 people."
The Hog made sounds. With great difficulty, I translated his answer as a question. "Is wrong to kill and eat? Men kill and eat. No way to leave this land. Eat toothies. Are hard to catch. Little other food but Maggiese."
The Hog closed his eye and wheezed through his open mouth. I argued with myself.
Galactic Government specified the correct procedure when an intelligent species was discovered. All possible efforts toward peaceful contact and negotiation should be made, however strange or dangerous the species might be. The discoverer could not molest the creatures on his own responsibility. Technically, the Hog was a murderer, but GG renounced the ancient belief that he who kills must be killed, and considered that murderers suffered from a curable illness.
Betty Toal—if she lived—and all other Maggiese would rejoice if I dynamited the Hog. I would receive my fee. No one would realize the Hog had been anything but a man-eating brute. Centuries might pass before GG zoologists examined the giant swine of Planet Maggie, if, indeed, others existed beyond the peninsula. The Hog would probably die of heatstroke, whatever I did.
With some surprise, I found that my pack remained on my shoulders, although it dangled by a single strap. I pulled the water pump from its pocket, walked to the river, and threw in the intake hose. Uncoiling the line, I moved back toward the Hog. The hose was too short, but I set the nozzle for maximum force and, remembering instructions in the booklet, sprayed water over the Hog's head.
The liquid revived him until he could push himself to a grotesque sitting position with his front feet. I shot water into his mouth and said, "Did you catch the woman in the tunnel?"
"Nooo," the Hog answered.
"You killed Toal," I said, dropping the hose and once more filling my hands with dynamite.
"Nooo," the Hog repeated. With a mouth unsuited for speech, he laboriously made a proposal. If I would spare him, he would attempt to leave the peninsula, going around the swamp to the coast and risking the currents and sea life in an effort to swim to the main continent.
With my finger on a dynamite fuse, I considered the plan. The Hog swayed to his feet.
Something fiendish screeched overhead. An explosion thundered in the rocks beside the river. Fragments whined through the hot air. The Hog squealed. I dropped prone and wriggled into a depression.
A second explosion rent the ground in front of me, showering me with dirt and brush. The Hog tried to run. His weakened legs quivered under him.
The third blast occurred between his front hoofs.
I crawled into a gully and, idiotically clutching the dynamite tubes, put my arms over my head. Tensed for more destruction, I lay there for several minutes. When I looked up, five or six toothies ran past my face.
Wearily, I stood erect. The Hog's remains lay in a pond of blood. Toothies scuttled out of the brush and the rocks and moved around the carcass. Having seen enough nonhuman intelligence for the present, I refused to believe the rodents were dancing in gleeful victory.
I stumbled off toward the vinetrees to learn the fate of Betty Toal, but she peeped over a rock. "You killed the Hog," she said. "What was that screeching?"
I stopped and breathed deeply. Toal said, "Was lost in the side tunnels."
"No," I murmured, "I didn't kill the Hog.”