Balance of Power (6 page)

Roach just grunted. He moved to the edge of the rock and spat into the water far below.

“We’d better get back,” I said. “We’ll have to bring the ship upriver. It might be a mile or two more before we find somewhere suitable to build a base. There’s no point in trying to penetrate to the interior in a rowboat.”

Roach seemed glad of the decision

“We need a good night’s sleep,” agreed Nieland. “Tomorrow the work starts.”

That thought didn’t seem to gladden Roach’s heart.

“We could find another island,” suggested the crewman. “A little bigger. That’s to be safe.”

I was already beginning to lower myself down the gully, and didn’t bother to answer him. Mariel followed.

All the way back to the ship, Roach’s eyes were scanning the forest above us, searching the shadows for something to be scared of, feeding his own unformed fears.

I knew that our suspicious forebodings were justified. The crew
wasn’t
going to be any happier now we’d reached our destination.

At least, I thought, they won’t begrudge putting work into the building of a nice strong stockade.

When things seemed to be going moderately well, and I had managed to transfer most of my own equipment from the cramped cabin aboard ship to the not-quite-so-cramped tent on the ridge, I put it to the joint supervisors that it was time to begin the work of laying in supplies from the forest. They were quick enough to agree, having been living off
Daedalus
MDR rations for some time (a rather unappetizing diet if you aren’t used to it). I asked for three crew members, the logic being that we would all have to learn to find food eventually, and that the quicker a couple of the crew were able to take on the work the quicker I could stop being a guide and teacher. After a bit of haggling, I got two: the officially designated cook (one of the females) and Roach. I didn’t really consider Roach educable in this respect, but he was sent by Ogburn on the basis of his reputation with a gun. The prospect of fresh meat was something that appealed to Ogburn. Ling came along too.

The survey team had landed on Delta only briefly, and had been rather tentative in their explorations. They had steered clear of the aliens and had done most of the actual surveying from the air. The survey report on the fruits of the forest was therefore a little sparse...and because of the long isolation of the two continents and the virtually independent evolutionary histories they had enjoyed it wasn’t possible to apply lessons learnt on Lambda in any but the most general way. That meant that we would have to proceed partly by trial and error, though much of the equipment I had managed to bring with me was directed to the purpose of testing for nutritional qualities and poisons. In fact, the one thing we could be virtually certain of before starting out was that any local game which we managed to shoot would be edible.

I took along my own rifle, not because I didn’t trust Roach’s aim (though I had my suspicions) but because it seemed a more civilized weapon. And if anything dangerous turned up, I didn’t want to rely entirely on one man and a rather primitive shotgun. I hoped that we wouldn’t run into any aliens until the occasion was more propitious.

We scored trees as we went so that we could be sure of finding our way back.

Fruits and nuts aren’t as common in forests as is generally made out...especially not forests full of fruit-eating birds. Nor, when you do find them, are they always easy to get at. For the first half hour or so I was taking samples in some profusion, more out of scientific interest than because I thought many of them would offer a supply of useful food, but curiosity for curiosity’s sake began to wane after a while, and I began to search more rigorously for hopeful growths. In the meantime, Roach grew steadily more impatient. Maybe he had expected to see small deer or big fat birds lurking around every bush. The pace at which we moved irritated him. He wanted to cover more ground in a hurry, stalking his prey with single-minded intensity. He fancied himself quite a hunter, and he thought that the rest of us were cramping his style.

Eventually, he began drifting apart from us—slightly ahead or to one side. Periodically, Ling, the cook and I would stop for discussions about some particular vegetable, considering its abundance, recognizability and possible usefulness. At other times we would dig up roots in search of tubers or other storage organs. These pauses he saw as his chance to make his kill. I didn’t say anything about it. He wouldn’t have taken it kindly, and I really couldn’t bring myself to care much whether he got lost or not.

It was just his luck—and ours—that while he was wandering off on one of his mini-expeditions we found the meat.

We had come to a thicket, and were investigating its berries when we heard mewling inside. Ling parted the bushes and stepped into the thick undergrowth before I could say anything. Then he parted the foliage so that we could see. In a “nest” made from matted grasses there was a group of small mammals. They rather resembled pigs or enlarged baby rats. Their eyes were open and they were mobile, but they didn’t attempt to run. They just filled their lungs and yelled as hard as they could. That wasn’t very hard, as it happened, but it was a thin, penetrative sound.

“Don’t!” I said, as Ling reached down to pick up one of the creatures. I was unslinging my rifle, knowing what was about to happen.

“Back out,” I said. I didn’t have time to say any more.

She burst from the undergrowth away to our right, already at full speed. She came thundering across the open ground. She was about the size of an Alsatian dog, with a rodent-like head and a body that put me in mind of a tapir, striped in brown and white.

She was head on to me and I hit her between the eyes. If you’re firing bullets that’s not a bad place to hit, but anesthetic darts aren’t intended to go through skulls. She kept coming, refusing even to flinch.

“Get out of the way!” I yelled.

The cook was free to move, and she did—away to the left. I went right, on the principle that you should keep the adversary confused. But Ling was still in the bushes, and he couldn’t move at all.

I fired again, getting her neatly in the flank this time. It would put her out for the count, but another unfortunate thing about darts is that they don’t work instantaneously. Ling would have been in trouble if the beast had reached him, but the woman swung at the animal with the satchel in which she’d been putting all our souvenirs. It was fairly heavy now, and it caught the pig-thing on the snout. The pig-thing promptly redirected its attack, veering off to the left. The cook was off-balance and I did the only thing I could think of—though looking back it doesn’t strike me as a particularly appropriate reaction. I dropped everything and dived forward to catch its tail in both hands.

That
really
made it mad. Trumpeting its rage it doubled back on itself and came at me. Luckily, having given up all its forward momentum, it didn’t hit me very hard. It butted me on the shoulder, but didn’t use its teeth. I thumped it on the snout.

The beast seemed to remember then what had brought her in the first place, and became once again a mother rushing to the support of her young. She let go another trumpeting sound—this time rather plaintive—and tried to get back to the nest in the thicket.

It was too late. The drug got to her at last and she fell over, unconscious. I leaned over her prostrate form and plucked the first dart out of her head. She was lying on the other one.

Then Roach appeared, belatedly, brandishing his phallic symbol.

I rubbed my shoulder, which was slightly bruised, and ignored him. He didn’t stop until he was right on top of me, and when I looked up (I was still sprawled on the ground) I was surprised to see that he was angry. The fact that he’d missed out had really made the bile rise. Then, as I struggled slowly to my feet, the anger ebbed. He took out a knife from his belt and began looking round.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“A pole,” he said. “We cut a pole, tie her feet together, sling the....”

“I know the theory,” I said. “But not this time.”

“What?” He was holding the knife as if he couldn’t wait to stick it into someone.

“Not this one,” I told him. “We’ll let her be. She’ll wake up.”

“You’re crazy!” he said.

“It’s not sporting,” I said, gently. “A mother with babies. We’re not desperate. We can shoot something else for dinner.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind. Instead, he said—in a tone which I presume was meant to be reasonable—“We’ll take the lot back. This lot’ll feed the whole crew. We haven’t caught a smell of anything else.”

I didn’t want to argue. I knew full well we had no common ground on which to debate the issue.

I just said: “No.”

“Wait,” said Ling. “Sentiment is all very well. But a good meal for all of us...it’s the first in a long time. We’re entitled.”

He was right, in his own way. On Attica, my scruples were meaningless. But I came from Earth, where the work of an ecologist is often one long, long fight to conserve species threatened by a sense of values that has no room for them. My prejudices had been deeply ingrained by the experiences of many individual battles.

I hesitated, trying to weigh it all up in my mind, knowing that by all the rules of diplomacy I ought to set my prejudices aside.

Roach didn’t give me a chance to give in gracefully. He simply let the muzzle of his gun swivel to point at the sleeping creature’s neck, and pulled the trigger.

The shot echoed in the trees on every side.

“It’s dead now,” he sneered.

Temper rose in me like a flood, and I felt an uncontrollable urge to smash the butt of my own gun into his face. He watched me, and I knew that he’d have loved the excuse to hit me. We were all set for a brawl I had no chance of winning.

I was saved by a new arrival. It wasn’t the U.S. Marines come to save us from ourselves. It was daddy, come to kill the lot of us.

I didn’t know whether to think of him as a bull or a boar, but whatever he was he was the size of a small donkey and he was as mad as hell. Unlike his late wife he had some very useful weapons dressing his skull—six, to be precise. They were curved tusks, in two rows along the snout. They looked the sort of tool evolution might devise for the job of disemboweling.

He came across the clearing like a tank. I saw him over Roach’s shoulder, dropped to one knee and brought up my gun. I never fired it, because Roach put a boot in my chest and shoved. I never knew whether he had seen the charging boar or not. Maybe he was starting a fight, maybe he was just getting me out of the way so that
this
kill could be his.

Either way, Roach turned and raised his gun. He had one barrel left and he let fly. He was too late. The boar was traveling too fast, and that tusked head, with a vicious sideways twist, ran straight into Roach’s groin.

He screamed, and screamed again.

I was flat on my back and the beast could have dealt with me with a single leap and a quick flash of the horns, but Roach’s shot had peppered its back and head, and it was in no mood for tactical planning. It cut at Roach again, ripping his belly and pulling out his guts like candy floss as he folded up, still screaming.

Ling and the woman were running for the trees. I brought the rifle up and pumped out three darts on automatic fire. I managed to get to my feet, and at last the beast abandoned Roach and came for me. I stabbed out at its head with the butt of my gun, and caught it a solid blow. It reeled, and went to its knees—not because of the power of my blow but because the shot and the darts were taking their toll. I hit it again, the same way. It rolled over.

I sat down, suddenly out of breath.

Ling and the woman came back, slowly. I took Roach’s gun out of his dead hand and passed it to the woman.

“All right,” I said, ignoring their horror-stricken expressions, “now we have the whole family. A real banquet. So much for sentiment.”

I felt myself for injuries. There weren’t any. But I was trembling a little.

The four babies were still mewling hopelessly. Instinct told them that it was the right thing to do. So much for instinct.

There was blood everywhere. Animal blood, human blood.

“Go back to the camp,” I told them. “Quickly. Get some men out here. We’re going to need three poles now.”

The woman was crying. She knelt over Roach, and she was crying. That shocked me slightly. She was nearly fifty, with graying hair and a face that was set like granite. I couldn’t tell whether it was grief or shock that was bringing the tears. Then she looked at me, and there was hatred in her eyes. I couldn’t understand why, for a moment or two. I just couldn’t see how it added up in her mind to being all my fault. In my book, it was all down to Roach. But that wasn’t the way she saw it. It was Roach who was dead, Roach whom she was crying over. I’d picked the argument. She wasn’t concerned with all the might-have-beens and the logic of the situation. She didn’t care that Roach had paused to kick me out of the way so that I couldn’t shoot the creature. It was all my fault and that was all there was to it.