Away Games: Science Fiction Sports Stories (19 page)

I walked away in disgust and joined Chajinka beneath a small tree. He was standing beside a young dead herbivore whose skull had been crushed.

“Snark,” he said, pointing to the skull.

“When?” I asked.

He pulled back the dead animal’s lips to examine its gums, felt the inside of its ears, examined other parts for a few seconds.

“Five hours,” he said. “Maybe six.”

“The middle of the night.”

“Yes.”

• • •

“Its habit of getting up late you’ll agree

That it carries too far, when I say

That it frequently breakfasts at five-o’clock tea,

And dines on the following day.”

• • •

“Can you pick up his trail?” I asked Chajinka.

He looked around, then gave the Dabih equivalent of a frown. “It vanishes,” he said at last, pointing to a spot ten feet away.

“You mean some animals obliterated his tracks after he made them?”

He shrugged. “No tracks at all. Not his, not anyone’s.”

“Why not?”

He had no answer.

I stared at the ground for a long moment. “Okay,” I said at last. “Let’s get back to the vehicle.”

He resumed his customary position on the hood, while I sat behind the control panel and thought.

“Well?” asked Marx. “Did it have something to do with the Snark?”

“Yeah,” I said, still puzzled by the absence of any tracks. “He made a kill during the night. His prey was an animal built for what I would call evasive maneuvering. That means he’s got excellent nocturnal vision and good motor skills.”

“So he’s a night hunter?” asked Ramona.

“No, I wouldn’t say that,” I replied. “He killed the crystal-horned buck at midday, so like most predators he’s also an opportunist; when a meal is there for the taking, he grabs it. Anyway, if we can’t find his lair, we’re probably going to have to build a blind, sit motionless with our guns, hang some fresh bait every evening, and hope it interests him.”

“That’s not
real
hunting!” scoffed Marx.

“There’s no way we can go chasing after him in the dark,” I responded.

“I’m not chasing
anything
in the dark!” said Desmond adamantly. “You want to do it, you do it without me.”

“Don’t be such a coward!” said Marx.

“Fuck you, Willard!” Desmond retorted.

“Bold words,” said Marx. “Why don’t you take some of that bravery and aim it at the animals?”

“I hate it here!” snapped Desmond. “I think we should go back to camp.”

“And do what?” asked Marx sarcastically.

“And consider our options,” he replied. “It’s a big planet. Maybe we could take off and land on one of the other continents—one without any Snarks on it.”

“Nonsense!” said Marx. “We came here to hunt big game. Well, now we’ve found it.”

“I don’t know
what
we’ve found,” said Desmond, halfway between anger and panic, “and neither do you.”

“That’s what makes it such good sport and so exciting,” said Marx.

“Exciting is watching sports on the holo,” Desmond shot back.
“This
is
dangerous.”

“Same damned thing,” muttered Marx.

• • •

We spent the next two days searching unsuccessfully for any sign of the Snark. For a while I thought he had moved out of the area and considered moving our base camp, but then Chajinka found some relatively fresh tracks, perhaps three hours old. So we didn’t move the camp after all but we also didn’t find the creature.

Then, on the third afternoon of the search, as we were taking a break, sitting in the shade of a huge tree with purple and gold flowers, we heard a strange sound off in the distance.

“Thunder?” asked Marx.

“Doesn’t seem likely,” replied Pollard. “There’s not a cloud in the sky.”

“Well, it’s
something,”
continued Marx.

Ramona frowned. “And it’s getting closer. Well, louder, anyway.”

On a hunch, I set my lenses to Telescopic, and it was a damned lucky thing I did.

“Everybody! Up into the tree—fast!”
I shouted.

“But—”

“No arguments! Get going!”

They weren’t the most agile tree-climbers I’d ever encountered, but when they were finally able to see what I had seen, they managed to get clear of the ground in one hell of a hurry. A minute later a few thousand Marx’s Gazelles thundered past.

I waited for the dust to settle, then lowered myself to the ground and scanned the horizon.

“Okay, it’s safe to come down now,” I announced.

“Why didn’t we climb into the vehicle?” asked Ramona, getting out of the tree and checking her hands for cuts.

“It’s an open vehicle, Mrs. Desmond,” I pointed out. “You could have wound up with a fractured skull as they jumped over it or with a gazelle in your lap if one of them was a poor jumper.”

“Point taken.”

“What the hell would cause something like that?” asked Pollard, staring after the stampeding herd as he brushed himself off.

“I’d say a predator made a sloppy kill, or maybe blew one entirely.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Because this is the first time we’ve seen a stampede we can assume that when they’re killed quickly and efficiently, the gazelles just move out of the predator’s range and then go back to grazing. It’s when the predator misses his prey, or wounds it, and then races after it into the middle of the herd that they panic.”

“You think it’s one of the big cats?” asked Pollard.

“It’s possible.”

“I’d love to get some holos of those cats on a kill.”

“You may get your wish, Mr. Pollard,” I said. “We’ll backtrack to where the stampede started and hope we get lucky.”

“That suits me just fine,” said Marx, patting his rifle.

• • •

We headed southwest in the vehicle until the terrain became too rough, then left it behind and started walking as the landscape changed from hilly and tree-covered to heavily-forested. Chajinka trotted ahead of us, eyes on the ground, spotting things even I couldn’t see, and finally he came to a stop.

“What it is?” I asked, catching up with him.

He pointed straight ahead into the dense foliage. “He is there.”

“He?”

“The Snark,” he said, pointing to a single track.

“How deep is the cover?” I asked. “How do you know he didn’t run right through it?”

He pointed to the bushes, which were covered with thorns. “He cannot run through this without pain.”

“You’ve never seen him,” said Ramona, joining us. “How do you know?”

“If it did not rip his flesh, he would be a forest creature, created by God to live here,” answered Chajinka, as if explaining it to a child. “But we know that he hunts plains game. A forest dweller with thick, heavy skin and bones could not move swiftly enough. So this is not his home it is his hiding place.”

I thought there was a good chance that it was more than his hiding place, that it could very well be his fortress. It was damned near impenetrable, and the forest floor was covered with dry leaves, so no one was going to sneak up on him without giving him plenty of warning.

“What are we waiting for?” asked Marx, approaching with Desmond. He stopped long enough to take his rifle from his gunbearer.

“We’re waiting until I can figure out the best way to go about it,” I responded.

“We walk in and blow him away,” said Marx. “What’s so hard about that?”

I shook my head. “This is
his
terrain. He knows every inch of it. You’re going to make a lot of noise walking in there, and the way the upper terraces of the trees are intertwined, I’ve got a feeling that it could be dark as night 600 yards into the forest.”

“So we’ll use infra-red scopes on our guns,” said Marx.

I kept staring at the thick foliage. “I don’t like it,” I said. “He’s got every advantage.”

“But
we’ve
got the weapons,” persisted Marx.

“With minimal visibility and maneuverability, they won’t do you much good.”

“Bullshit!” spat Marx. “We’re wasting time. Let’s go in after him.”

“The four of you are my responsibility,” I replied. “I can’t risk your safety by letting you go in there. Within a couple of minutes you could be out of touch with me and with each other. You’ll be making noise with every step you take, and if I’m right about the light, before long you could be standing right next to him without seeing him. And we haven’t explored any Dodgson forests yet he might not be the only danger. There could be everything from arboreal killer cats to poisonous insects to 50-foot-long snakes with an attitude.”

“So what do you propose?” asked Marx.

“A blind makes the most sense,” I said. “But it could take half a day to build one, and who the hell knows where he’ll be by then?” I paused. “All right. The three of you with weapons will spread out. Mr. Pollard, stand well behind them. Chajinka and I will go into the bush and try to flush him out.”

“I thought you said it was too dangerous,” said Ramona.

“Let me amend that,” I answered. “It’s too dangerous for amateurs.”

“If there’s a chance that he can harm you, why don’t we just forget about it?” she continued.

“I appreciate your concern,” I began, “but …”

“I’m not being totally altruistic. What happens to us if he kills you?”

“You’ll return to base camp and tell Mbele what happened. He’ll radio a subspace message to headquarters, and Silinger & Mahr will decide whether to give you a refund or take you to another planet with a new hunter.”

“You make it sound so … so businesslike,” she said distastefully.

“It’s my business,” I replied.

“Why did you ever become a hunter?”

I shrugged. “Why did you become a judge?”

“I have a passion for order,” she said.

“So do I,” I replied.

“You find order in killing things?”

“I find order in Nature. Death is just a part of it.” I paused. “Now, Mr. Marx,” I said, turning back to him, “I want you to …”

He wasn’t there.

“Where the hell did he go?” I demanded.

No one seemed to know, not even Chajinka. Then his gunbearer approached me.

“Boss Marx went
there
.” He pointed to the forest, then ruefully held up the back-up rifle. “He did not wait for me.”

“Shit!”
I muttered. “It’s bad enough that I’ve got to go in after the Snark! Now I stand a hell of a good chance of getting blown away by that macho bastard!”

“Why would he shoot you?” asked Ramona.

“He’ll hear me before he sees me,” I answered. “He’s running on adrenaline. He’ll be sure I’m the Snark.”

“Then stay out here.”

“I wish I could,” I said truthfully. “But it’s my job to protect him whether he wants me to or not.”

That particular argument became academic about five seconds later, when we heard a shot, and then a long, agonized scream.

A
human
scream.

“You two stand about 200 yards apart,” I said to the Desmonds. “Shoot anything that comes out of there that doesn’t look like me or a Dabih!” Then, to Chajinka: “Let’s go!”

The Dabih led the way into the forest. Then, as it started getting thicker and darker, we lost Marx’s trail. “We’re more likely to find him if we split up,” I whispered. “You go left, I’ll go right.”

I kept my gun at the ready, wishing I’d inserted my infra-red lenses into my eyes that morning. After a minute I couldn’t hear Chajinka anymore, which meant when I finally heard footsteps I was going to have to hold my fire until I could tell whether it was the Dabih or the Snark.

It’s no secret that hunters hate going into the bush after a wounded animal. Well, let me tell you something: going into the bush after an
un
wounded animal is even less appealing. Sweat ran down into my eyes, insects crawled inside my shoes and socks and up my shirtsleeves, and my gun seemed to have tripled in weight. I could barely see ten feet in front of me, and if Marx had yelled for help from 50 yards away, I probably would be five minutes locating him.

But Marx was past yelling for help. I was suddenly able to make out the figure of a man lying on the ground. I approached him cautiously, seeing Snarks—whatever they looked like—behind every tree.

Finally I reached him and knelt down to examine him. His throat had been slashed open, and his innards were pouring out of a gaping hole in his belly. He was probably dead before he hit the ground.

“Chajinka!”
I hollered. There was no response.

I called his name every thirty seconds, and finally, after about five minutes, I heard a body shuffling through the thick bush, its translated, monotone voice saying, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

“Get over here!” I said.

He joined me a moment later. “Snark,” he said, looking at Marx’s corpse.

“For sure?” I asked.

“For sure.”

“All right,” I said. “Help me carry his body back out of here.”

Then, suddenly, we heard two rifle shots.

“Damn!” I bellowed. “He’s broken out!”

“Perhaps he will be dead,” said Chajinka, leading the way back out of the forest. “There were two shots.”

When we finally got into the open, we found Philemon Desmond sitting on the ground, hyper-ventilating, his whole body shaking. Ramona and Pollard stood a few yards away, staring at him—she with open contempt, he with a certain degree of sympathy.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“He burst out of the woods and came right at me!” said Desmond in a shaky voice.

“We heard two shots. Did you hit him?”

“I don’t think so.” He began shaking all over. “No, I definitely didn’t.”

“How the hell could you miss?” I shouted. “He couldn’t have been twenty yards away!”

“I’ve never killed anything before!” Desmond yelled back.

I scanned the hilly countryside. There was no sign of the Snark, and there had to be a good five hundred hiding places just within my field of vision.

“Wonderful!” I muttered. “Just wonderful!”

• • •

The Bellman looked uffish, and wrinkled his brow.

“If only you’d spoken before!

It’s excessively awkward to mention it now,

With the Snark, so to speak, at the door!”