The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (68 page)

The newborn calf hugged his mother’s flank, his horns mere bumps. He suddenly butted beneath her flank, tail wriggling as he nursed. The collective sigh from the tourists made the guide breathe his own sigh of relief, she noted. Well, upset guests would hardly give him a fat tip. She let them watch the two older calves butt heads and the herd even obliged by grazing closer to the bus. By the time they moved on to the elephant watching spot for cocktails and their gourmet dinner, the mood was festive once more, the injured stallion forgotten.

Tomorrow, she would go check on him. Assure herself that the predators had found him. Injured as he was, the dog pack that patrolled that territory would almost certainly take him, but perhaps not right away. She called up that sector, scanned the predator inventory. To her relief, the lions were headed in that direction. They should get to him quickly.

During dinner they lucked out and a scimitar cat – quite shy and a rare sighting – chose that night to come down to the river to drink. The tourists flocked to the windows, their links pointing as they videoed in night mode. The elephants showed on time and the new Mammoth type calf went so far as to walk nearly up to the bus, trunk lifted in curiosity, before his mother shooed him nervously away, and stomped a threat toward them, her ears erect, trunk curled back like a cobra.

The tour guide looked pleased, as if Tahira had orchestrated the whole show. Tahira sat back in her seat as they returned to the compound in the gathering darkness, answering questions, giving small lectures on the history of the Preserve, the geneticists’ work, the effect of the huge preserve areas on climate stability. They asked occasional questions about the injured stallion.

No one brought up the dead girl. Not one.

She climbed down from the bus into the cooling night beneath the white arch of the Milky Way and a sliver of new moon. They would go back to the comfort of the resort to have dessert and drinks and to compare video clips. The tour guide gave her a wide grin and a wave as the door closed, anticipating good tips, obviously.

Jen would have left for the day and she would have the place to herself.

You have a visitor, the door murmured as she reached the verandah. He had an official security pass to enter. His personal ID is blocked. “I know who it is.” She sighed, then straightened her shoulders. “Open.”

“What the hell is going on, Tahira?” Detective Malthers levered himself up from the sofa in the main room. “Do you know just how much trouble you’re going to cause me when my boss starts getting the feeds?”

“He has his link shut off tonight? I would have thought he’d have the news already.” She headed for the kitchen wall, thirsty. “And if I protest your use of a security pass to override my door lock, I hope you can produce the warrant.” She closed her eyes as he seized her arm. Halted. “Shawn . . . I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” He spun her around to face him, his face pale. “You withheld information from me? You lied to me about that girl’s death? And then you spill it to a bunch of tourists?” His nostrils were pinched. “You’d damn well better be sorry.”

Some of them had certainly blogged from the bus. She had counted on that. She met his eyes. “I did not lie to you.”

“Then why did you tell them . . .” His eyes narrowed and he let go of her arm. “No way. No way you do that.”

“Do what?” She widened her eyes. “If I tell a story to tourists to enliven their trip and they exaggerate it in their personal blogs, this is not a crime. Your boss can deny whatever he wishes to deny and if the outcry is loud enough, my boss will probably fire me. Would you like some water?”

“What do you think you’re going to do?” His voice was harsh.

“Go to bed.” She filled a glass from the refrigerator tap, filled a second glass.

“I’m going to get a warrant for your arrest.” He ignored the proffered glass.

“On what grounds?” She raised an eyebrow. “I suspect your boss will not agree with you. It will be hard enough to deal with the media when they get hold of the tourists’ mistaken statements. It will be much worse if you have arrested the manager of the Preserve and then have to release her. Your boss is very conscious of his media image.”

“I’m staying here tonight.” He glared at her.

“Be my guest.” She shrugged. “I told you, I’m going to bed.”

“Good.” He stretched out on the sofa, his jaw set.

She turned her back on him and activated her holo-field. Checked the Preserve first. Minor Perimeter alerts only – a couple of licensed backcountry backpackers who had retreated when they triggered the broadcast security announcement, a small herd of pronghorn that moved off when the repulsion field activated, broadcasting an unpleasant sonic pulse that discouraged most wildlife and the occasional lost livestock. Nothing else. Red icons signaled stationary chips – indicating that a bearer hadn’t moved for twelve hours. That usually represented death or serious injury. She checked the IDs . . . all prey species except for one elephant from the northernmost herd. An old female, but not so old that she should be dying yet. The elephants and the larger predators had been implanted with biometric chips. Tahira checked it, found signs of physical distress, but no clear diagnosis. She transferred the ID to her link. She’d fly over in the morning and check on it, on her rounds to chip new births. See what had happened.

Her AI search of the Security video of the running girl had turned up a match. 89 per cent. Tahira drew a deep breath, touched the green icon. A merchant site. Models? A naked woman lounged suggestively on a grizzly’s hide, caressing the dead, snarling face, tongue-tip peeking pink from lush, crimson lips. The secure interface requested a user ID and password. And a credit card. The entry fee made her purse her lips. She flagged the link, emailed it.

Malthers was peering at his link, his feet propped on the arm of the sofa. He looked up as she shut down her field. “What if the person who dropped her was a woman?” His eyes were hard.

She shrugged. “You are too tall for that sofa. Would you like me to inflate the guest bed?”

“No, thank you.” He went back to his link. “I don’t plan on sleeping.”

“While you are up, then, maybe you can see what’s for sale on the video sex markets. I just sent you a link that you might . . . find interesting. I don’t have the bud get to access it.” She turned and went into her room. When she woke briefly in the middle of the night, the light in the main room was still on and he was sitting on the sofa, hunched over his link.

She slept without dreaming, after that, and when she woke, he was gone.

The door seal sighed as it released and Jen strode in, bringing a smell of hot noon-time dust and heat, a hint of lion and sex. “Hey, how was your tour last night? Did they do a fancy spread?” He came up behind her, dropped his collecting bag onto the tiles with a small thump. “What’s with the reporters outside? The newsfeeds were full of the killing this morning. You were a witness? To the girl’s death?” His sandy brows arched over his pale eyes. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“I know I didn’t.” Tahira waved her hand through the field and the numbers and icons, the map of this girl’s history written in molecules, winked out. “Let’s not talk about it, okay?”

“You haven’t opened your secure email from the boss yet.”

“I know what it says.” She sighed.

“Tahira . . .” His hands came to rest lightly on her shoulders. “I work with the lions, too. I can do this euthanasia for you. You don’t have to. Just give me the chip ID.”

His hands offered comfort not sex. She let her shoulders relax a bit beneath the warmth and acknowledged the small heat of desire between her legs. He was very pretty. He would try hard to please her in bed. Her shiver of anticipation made her . . . sad. She was old enough to be his grandmother. The flesh had its own morality. She sighed, and his hands slid from her shoulders as she rose. “I appreciate your offer.” She smiled for him. “But it is my duty. It is my failing that the girl was able to be here.”

“That’s not true.” He shook his head, frowning. “She bought hackware good enough to get through the Perimeter sensors. It’s happened before. Remember those rich kids that came in here with a rifle? Right after I started working here? The ones who thought they were going to kill an elephant? That’s not your responsibility – that’s the responsibility of the company that contracts security to the Preserve.”

“That’s not what happened.” Tahira blanked the icons with a wave of her hand. “This is not like those teenage poachers with their utterly inadequate rifles. I knew they were there.”

“So her hackware was better, that’s all.” Jen shrugged. “Come on, Tahira. Nobody is blaming you . . . except you.”

“I doubt that is true.” She turned to meet his pale eyes. “Her mother? A lover? Who is mourning her? She was a girl, Jen, even if nobody claimed her as missing. The poor don’t bother. You know that no one will really look. You know where they have gone.” She turned away from the blue incomprehension of his eyes. “But they are blaming me. Besides, she was not rich enough to afford that level of hackware.”

He shook his head and heaved a sigh for her to hear. She ignored it as she ran through the surveillance program, suppressing a twinge of guilt because she hadn’t yet checked on the stationary elephant cow. Everything was fine, although the main horse herd was pushing into the grazing territory of the old mare’s small, splinter herd. This was a dry year and the grass was poor. She’d have to let them get pushed off their riverside pasture. That would weaken this year’s crop of still-nursing foals, and increase the kill rate by the northern pride. If another dry spring followed, she thought, the small herd would probably end up being absorbed back into the larger group. The old mare wouldn’t survive that merger.

The guide reports were routine. No problems, no accidents on any of the daily motorized tours currently winding through the Preserve and only a sprained ankle from one of the self-guided backpacking treks that were in progress. The hiker had been handled by a contracted first aid skimmer and planned to continue the trek in an augmented cast, having signed a health waver. Tahira checked the location of the various lion prides and elephant groups to make sure that the guides would provide visual contact for the guests. Four were lion treks and one was an elephant trek. But all their guides were experienced and they could find the chip signatures with their own software. They were all on target to give the paying hikers the thrill of a live sighting. Routine day. She retinaed the report, packed a few necessary items into her field bag, then left Jen to his microscope and took the skimmer out into the Preserve.

Shawn had not gotten his warrant, but then she had known he would fail.

She swung north, to check up on the stationary elephant before she started her chip work. It was a long flight, clear to the northwestern boundary of the Preserve, within sight of the monorail. The old cow was down after all, on her side in the shade of a thin copse of trees. She raised her head as Tahira skimmed over, ears erect, trunk curled as she got her forefeet under her, tried to heave herself to her feet. Two aunties had stayed with her and as she collapsed into the dust once more, they hurried up, stroking her with their trunks, watching Tahira warily as she landed the skimmer and approached cautiously. The dust beneath the old cow’s hindquarters had turned to mud from her urine. No sign of defecation. A blockage? Perhaps she had eaten something that damaged her gastrointestinal system. Her temperature was slightly elevated and when Tahira zoomed in with her glasses, sure enough the cow’s membranes looked pale. No sign of any external trauma. Natural Causes. She selected the diagnosis, uploaded visuals to the cow’s file, and set it to alert her when vitals fell to imminent death levels. She would return to make a more complete diagnosis then. For the record.

She caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye as she removed her glasses. Bear? Sure enough, when she slipped them back on, a green ring haloed the bushes where she had seen the movement and the ID appeared. One of the Short Faced bears, another of the engineers’ triumphant recreations. They were drawn by death. One of the aunties blew noisily and rushed the bushes, trunk high. The bear retreated, growling, circled around to windward. Tahira retreated to her skimmer, although the bear was focused on the dying cow. Unlikely that the aunties would allow it to hasten the old cow’s end.

Natural causes, she thought as she lifted to swing eastward again. You could label the girl’s death as natural causes. To the lions it had been a natural end. The monorail was curving along the white arch of track on its first run of the morning. In a few moments the tourists would surely spot the cow and the questions would start pouring into Admin from the passengers. All the tourist monorails carried a direct link to Preserve Administration. Tahira set the skimmer on auto, homing on the ID of the bison herd she needed to chip, and quickly edited out an image of the cow and her aunties from the old cow’s ID file. She selected one of her taken in the past, with her last calf, set her link to record and smiled for the tourists. Quickly, in a warm and positive tone, she explained the situation, that the cow was dying of natural causes, the aunties were attending her, and that this (insert mother and calf image here) was part of the natural cycle of life and death, that the old cow’s flesh would nourish wild dog cubs (she called up a file, inserted a recent shot of three pups playing) and the scavenger population. She uploaded the video file to Administration and texted Amy Shen, the head of PR, to expect questions about the dying cow and offer this Special Message from the Manager. Amy would run the file through her editing software to smooth out any rough edges and in a few minutes, when the worried texts came in, the tourists would have her reassuring explanation.