Shame of Man (55 page)

The pot commandos reached them. Two trained their weapons on the campers while the third faced them menacingly. “Whatcha doing here? This section of the forest is closed.”

“Closed?” Bill asked mildly. “We understood it was open to camping.”

“Rotating closure, idiot. You're off limits.”

“Then perhaps you will tell us where the new boundary is,” Bill said. “So we can get on its right side. We'll gladly go there.”

“Just get the hell out of the area,” the commando snapped. “You know what we mean.”

“We will,” Bill said. He started to step forward.

“Wait a minute, asshole. What's in that pack?” Without waiting for an answer, the man put his hands on Bill's knapsack, opened it, reached in—and found the hammers. He whistled. “Got a live one,” he announced.

“Tree spikers,” another said with deep disgust.

“Where'd you spike?” the leader demanded.

Bill shrugged, not answering.

“That does it,” the man said. “I'm arresting you.”

“Then identify yourself and name the charge,” Bill said evenly.

“I'm Lieutenant Baabub of Forest Service Enforcement. You're in custody for maliciously damaging public property and being in violation of closure.” He looked angrily around. “All of you.”

Then the man's eye fell on Anne, and lingered. Hugh did not like that look at all, or the way the other men looked briefly at Faience and more persistently at Minnie.

The two families were herded under guard to a Forest Service security trailer, where they were held until evening, then questioned individually, including the women. Hugh was quite uneasy when Baabub took Anne alone into the trailer for an hour, but he knew she could handle herself. Then it was his turn. “Okay, we know you were doing it; your wife confessed,” the man said. “You just sign a corollary statement, and we'll let you go until your court appearance.”

“I will sign no statement,” Hugh said. “And I'm sure Anne didn't either.”

“Oh, you figure it's okay to vandalize national forests and kill people when their saws get smashed by those spikes?”

“People have been killed?” Hugh asked with surprise.

“Don't play the innocent with me! You eco-terrorists don't care who gets hurt or how many jobs are lost. You're probably all Communists.”

“Who was killed?” Hugh asked evenly. He did not like this man at all, and doubted his veracity.

“Cloverdale! I'm talking about Cloverdale. Remember that? You damned Earth First!ers spiked that redwood log and damn near killed that mill worker. That's what you want for the nation?”

“No,” Hugh said, shaken. “I don't want anyone hurt. But you know, no one has to cut those big old redwoods. They are of more value to our country as tourist attractions and sanctuaries for wildlife. After the last trees are cut down, where will the jobs be then?”

“I'm not here to argue with you about the value of trees, joker. The question is, do we tolerate vandalism and law breaking? Do we let innocent people get maimed because you terrorists got a bug up your ass about a stupid owl? Now where were you spiking?”

“That's a funny attitude for the Forest Service,” Hugh remarked, knowing it would make the man angrier than ever. “It is my understanding that that owl represents the top of a food chain, which means that if it survives, so do all the creatures below it, and we know the system is sound. So it represents not so much an end in itself, but a bell marker, an indication of the health of the forest ecology. I should think you would be the first to protect its habitat.”

“So you'd take a worthless owl over the jobs of human beings!” the man said righteously. “You don't care at all about the big picture.”

“My picture is bigger than the temporary convenience of local loggers who will soon lose their jobs anyway, because they are heedless of the principle of sustainability. Or of companies that don't care at all about the future welfare of our nation, so long as they get their profits today. They are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

The man shook his head. “Now you're getting into fairy tales. You're really weird.”

The dialogue continued, but got nowhere. Hugh was finally let out, to make way for the next subject for questioning, Minnie. He knew that Baabub would get nowhere with her, either.

As they waited, Hugh asked Bill about Cloverdale. The man laughed. “That was a celebrated episode two years ago. A band saw hit an 11-inch spike in a log. The saw shattered, and a piece of it struck a worker in the face, breaking his jaw and knocking out several teeth. They put up a twenty
thousand dollar award for information leading to the arrest of the Earth First! spiker who did it. Big outcry.”

Hugh was perplexed and disturbed. “You don't seem concerned.”

“It turned out to have been done by a conservative Republican in his midfifties who owned property next to the logging site. Seemed he was annoyed by the heavy truck traffic, noise, and erosion resulting from the cutting. Earth First! had nothing to do with it. Turned out that that saw that broke was cracked, wobbly, and due for replacement; it wouldn't have flown apart if it had been good. It was the mill proprietor who was careless about the safety of his workers, not the eco-warriors. There have been no injuries from Earth First! tree spikings. We always warn the folk concerned, so they know the risk before they start cutting a spiked forest. It's the inconvenience and financial loss that really annoys them.”

So there had been no deaths or injuries from “legitimate” tree spiking. Hugh was relieved.

The separate interrogations didn't accomplish anything for the Forest Service, which was clearly operating on suspicion rather than proof, and had no real case to make. But the experience drew the two families closer together. Especially Billie and Minnie, who seemed to be enjoying enduring adversity together.

Finally all eight of them were cited for trespassing, trucked to a remote trailhead miles from any house or phone or vehicle, and released at midnight. They had a long, hard hike ahead.

Somehow they didn't mind it.

Earth First!, founded in 1980 by Dave Foreman, who had formerly been an issues coordinator for The Wilderness Society, was the most notorious of a number of ecological activist groups. They were known as tree spikers, but practiced many types of interference to logging, mining, damming, overgrazing, road-building, poaching, and other wilderness-damaging activities. Some were quite imaginative and daring. In 1989 four activists dug a ditch across a logging road, filled it with cement, set their feet in it, and let it harden around them. Pot commandos used sledgehammers to get them out. But there were other episodes. The authorities, responsive to special interests, fought the activists constantly, but could not be fully effective against guerrilla action. As the quality of the soil, water, and air deteriorated, the general public's awareness of the environment increased, leading to tacit support for the activists. But as the pressure of burgeoning population increased, such efforts to protect the remaining wilderness areas seemed doomed. Most people did put jobs before owls.

Yet the question remained: should mankind be allowed to obliterate all other uses of the Earth? The Warriors for the Earth fought on.

CHAPTER 20

TASMANIA

In the early twenty-first century great mischief came to the peoples of the world, as the last forests were destroyed, species extinction was wholesale, climate changed, deadly pollution saturated air, earth, and sea, and the overstrained food supply collapsed. The population plummeted, the hard way. Only at the somewhat isolated fringes was the disruption minimal. One such fringe was Tasmania, south of Australia
—
or more correctly, several smaller islands off the north coast of Tasmania known as the Furneaux Group. The second largest of these was Cape Barren Island, named for its barrenness, whose unique history
perhaps led to its eventual success in survival. Tasmania had been reputed to have the cleanest air in the world, but in time the pollution spread even here.

The colonization of Tasmania by the white man was no kinder to the aborigine natives than it was elsewhere. De facto genocide was the rule. It was also used as a penal colony for Australian criminals. The natives were seemingly rendered extinct in 1876, but a number had been deported to the Furneaux islands. British sealing expeditions found this region to be rich with seals, and some sealers settled there, taking native wives. This mixed-breed settlement endured despite the hostility of the government, and finally was allowed to exist in peace. It maintained awareness of its aboriginal identity. Its physical and cultural isolation from European Tasmania seemed in the twentieth century to be a liability, but in the twenty-first emerged as an asset. Nevertheless there was an influx of contemporary science, as the people adopted what proved useful, without sacrificing cultural values. The resulting society was unlike either the European or aboriginal origins, but stronger than both in the changed world situation.

The time is
A.D.
2050; the place is Cape Barren Island.

H
UGH played his clarinet while Minne danced. The patrollers were rapt. She was only 15, but perhaps would never be prettier in her shaped slenderness and joy of nascent maturity. When the dance ended, the applause was enthusiastic.

Captain Ittai of the ferry approached. “I remember when you were a tyke only seven years old,” he said to Minne. “You showed promise then, when you danced aboard my boat, and you have realized it now. Your mother trained you well.”

“Thank you, Captain,” she said, flashing him a warm trained smile. She had learned to take compliments in stride, but she clearly valued this one, for Ittai was an old family friend. He had often taken them from Cape Barren Island north to Flinders Island or south to Tasmania for their gigs, and sometimes even to Australia, more than a hundred and fifty kilometers northwest.

Chief Joe came up to thank them personally. “It is good of you to stay to catch the late shift,” he said. “The men really appreciate it. Now I know you have to get home. I'll see you out the gate.”

“Thank you,” Hugh said. “We don't want Anne to worry.”

They walked out in the darkness to the fenced car lot. “It's in there,” Joe murmured almost inaudibly.

“Understood,” Hugh said. Then he and Minne got into their car, and he started the motor. It revved up almost silently, as Joe walked to open the gate by hand. Fuel cells were used for all powered machines, producing electricity to light houses and propel vehicles, leaving a residue of clean water. The island's solar, wind, and hydroelectric plants provided the power
for the preparation of the hydrogen fuel and the limited manufacturing industry; when those free resources failed, people simply existed on less. They would not touch wood or any fossil fuel, because the wood was too valuable for other purposes and the others were nonrenewable and polluting. Sustainability was the key, here and everywhere. The bad old days of heedless exploitation were gone, because those who had continued to practice it had doomed themselves to an unspeakably ugly demise.

“Dad, you forgot to turn on the lights,” Minne reminded him reprovingly.

“Tonight we drive without lights,” he said. “And without radio.”

“But that's not allowed,” she protested. “All cars have to be tracked.”

“It is allowed tonight.”

Joe swung the gate open—the wrong direction. Instead of clearing the way to the coast road, he gave them access to the forest road. Hugh drove his dark car through the gate and into the forest. He moved slowly, peering ahead.

“This is a mission!” Minne said, catching on. “You're after the poacher!”

“Yes. Joe put a rifle in the car, and will cover for me. It's the only way to catch a man who knows the guard schedules, watches cars, and monitors the radio. He's taken two trees in the last month, and Joe thinks he'll strike again tonight.”

“A rifle!”

“The forest is supposed to be clear this night,” he said grimly. “No one has any legitimate business in there. So if I see anyone, I'm supposed to shoot him and get out immediately. Joe will send guards to investigate.”

“Just for a couple of trees?” she asked. “When there are thousands in the forest?”

“Yes. Because it's a controlled wilderness. If we allow one person to take a tree, another person will want a tree, and then everyone, and the forest inevitably will be decimated. That is what happened to Earth in the twentieth century. When all the trees were gone, and the other natural resources, civilization collapsed. Now that we are forging a new, sustainable society here at the edge of the world, we mean to protect it in a way that others did not. Our fathers planted these trees where there had been only grazing land before; they enhanced the soil, channeled water, and protected it from predation. Now we have a healthy forest where none used to exist, that can sustain itself, as long as it is left alone. That means no poaching.”

“I know all that,” she said, a bit impatiently. “And I know how we're descended from mixed white sealers and black aborigines who escaped the war and starvation of the rest of the world. Because we were isolated, and had our own community, here on a small island off a big island off a continent that was far from population centers. And I know how we latched
onto the best that civilization had to offer, such as perfect contraception and completely nonpolluting engines. But shooting a man just for a tree? There must be a better way.”

“I can't say that I like it myself,” Hugh admitted. “But I trust Joe's judgment in such a matter; the decision is his, and I am acting as his representative. All I ask of you is that you say nothing about this to anyone.”

“You won't want to tell the world your act of citizenship?” she asked acidly. “Shooting a stranger without warning?”

“It's the way Joe wants it. So folk will know that poachers are likely to be anonymously shot. That should discourage repetition.”

She became thoughtful. “Wasn't it Machiavelli who said that fear was a better motivator than love?”

“I think so. For those who aren't motivated by love of the welfare of the community, fear may be a better tool. It would be nice if all people always had the best intentions, but unfortunately some don't.”

“Like when Bubba tried to get you booted from Cape Barren Island because you're left-handed? So he could court Mom, for whom he's had the hots for years despite her advanced years?”

Hugh was surprised. “How did you know about that? We have never spoken of it.”

“Serilda told me, when she was visiting Scevor. You know, Dad, I think she's still hot for you, too, after all these years, unbelievable as it may seem for anyone your age to have an interest in sex.”

She was teasing him. She knew that he and Anne were thirty-two and physically fit. She knew of the situation that had led him to have an affair with Serilda, from which Scevor had resulted. Serilda had had to give up her son when she married an heir with two children of his own, and Hugh, having coincidentally lost his own son, had been glad to take him. Then Serilda's marriage hadn't worked out, and she had divorced and returned to live with her brother Bubba, who was that family's heir. As a divorced nonheir her prospects for remarriage were slight, and Hugh could tell she would have liked to marry him. But he wanted none of her; Anne had always been his love. Fortunately Anne knew that, so had no concern. “Sex? I don't think I remember that word. What does it mean?”

She ignored that. “But sometimes I worry about Mom. I mean, I'm adopted, and Scevor's adopted, and so she has no real children. But she seems perfectly satisfied. She couldn't be a better mother to either of us even if we had been hers. Is that normal?”

“No,” he said seriously. “It means that's she's as fine a woman as exists, and a model for all others. You can see why I love her.”

“What,” she said with mock amazement. “You mean it's not just sex appeal?”

“How could it be, with us so anciently old?”

She bopped him on the shoulder with her small fist, reprovingly. Then she got serious. “I want to marry Bille.”

He was braced for it. “Minne, you're a year shy of nuptial age. You can't marry him yet.”

“We could mock marry.”

There was her real desire. Modern society was rigidly structured, with family limits enforced. No person married before age sixteen, and no couple had more than two children without special dispensation from the community as a whole. This was because of the disaster of uncontrolled human population increase that had destroyed most of the rest of the world, leaving it largely barren. Here, ironically, on an island named for its barrenness, they had a viable, sustainable community—because they had implemented the lessons of the past. Zero population growth was not an ideal, but an absolute. This had certain social consequences. But more was tolerated in the mock system.

“That could be complicated,” he said.

“It's like this, Dad,” she said persuasively. “We're in love and we know we'll marry. We just don't want to wait a whole ‘nother year.” Her tone made it sound like something clinically equivalent to eternity. “So we'll mock marry now, and then marry for real when I'm of age.”

“Let me elucidate the complications,” he said. “First, you can't have children—”

“We don't want them yet, Dad. We just want the sex. We'll apply for the antister dose when we ready.”

She was referring to the medication that countered the airborne contraceptive they all breathed. The atmosphere of the world was foul, and clearing with glacial slowness, so a filtration plant purified it for the island, and introduced the contraceptive. Anyone who got good air was sterile. That was the real control on population: the fact that only with community permission could anyone get the antisterility treatment, and while this was routine for married couples with fewer than two children, it was complicated beyond that.

“And since both of you are heirs, and two heirs can't marry—”

“But there are no limits on mock marriages,” she countered. “No restrictions at all. Mocks can be any ages, any status, any gender. Look at Bubba and Serilda—they can't marry, being brother and sister, but they were mock married when she got pregnant with Scevor. When the time comes for us to true marry, I'll give up my heirship to Scevor.”

Only one child, normally the firstborn, could inherit the family lot; that was the designated heir, duly registered in the community records. The nonheir had to find an heir to marry, or be excluded from reproduction. Some nonheirs left the island in search of better chances, but this was a bleak prospect, because other communities had similar restrictions. Most
settled for mock marriages, accepting the semblance of propriety in lieu of the reality. That was the necessary give in the rigid system. Mock marriages could be dissolved without delay by either party, if a real prospect developed. And it was true that there were no limits, since the marriages weren't real. Yet the parties were accepted, socially, as being married, and of course they cohabited. That was what made the convention so popular, and often necessary. Mock marriages were often for mutual convenience rather than love.

“And where would you stay, since each family is already quota'd on folk of your age bracket?” A family lot sustained six people: nominally two grandparents, two parents, and two children. No one could live where there wasn't a place, because neither law nor feasibility sanctioned it. A lot's garden, carefully tended, had a limited production. Though there was a brisk trade in food, custom enforced the limit: six occupants and one pet animal per lot.

“I'll stay with Bille's folks,” she said. “And you'll mock adopt Faience.”

Hugh shook his head. “You have it all figured out! Naturally you have cleared this with Scevor and Faience? They don't mind becoming mock brother and sister?”

“Naturally,” she agreed. “They love the notion.”

“And that is why you seek our permission—which you don't need for a mock relationship—because we have to accede to our own part in it,” he said. “We have to mock adopt Bille's sister, so you can move in with Bille.”

“You got it,” she agreed. “Well?”

“Why didn't you broach this first to your mother? She's the heir in our generation, you know; it's her parents we share with.”