The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (70 page)

The woman didn’t answer, but of course, she did. Tahira straightened. That was the lure of what would otherwise be no different from a farm or vat raised steak. If you couldn’t pull the trigger yourself, you could still watch it die. “You hide,” she said. “I’m going to move the skimmer ahead of the pride, ground it again. He’s going to come down and look for me.”

“He’s going to drop a grenade on you and leave.” The woman sounded contemptuous.

“Oh no.” Tahira grinned. “Like you, I’m wearing a chameleon field. And I also have a small device that a clever grad student hacked up – it generates the thermal effect of a 150 pound antelope. He was studying night hunting, trying to determine the importance of scent, thermal detection, sound, and sight in predator species. Our killer should think it’s me.” She shrugged. “He has been very careful not to leave any traces. I suspect that if I did not patrol as regularly as I do, we would never have known that anyone was killed here.” Another few hours, and only the scrap of fabric would have marked that kill site. “One of us needs to kill him.” She lifted her hand. “I would prefer that the lions do it.”

“How do you know they can?”

Tahira shrugged her good shoulder. “I will make it possible. If they do not, you or I will do it.” She pulled the highly illegal gun from her waistband, was impressed that the woman didn’t flinch.

“You could have shot me. While I was looking at the vid.” For a moment, she was silent. “I like you.” Her teeth flashed briefly. “You would have made a good meat hunter.”

“I think not.” Tahira stretched her lips back from her teeth. “But I am not sure we are so different. You know to stay downwind from the pride? They’re hunting.”

“I know.”

“I need my link.” Tahira held out her hand. The woman glanced at it, shrugged, handed it over. Tahira nodded and climbed onto the skimmer, hoping he showed before the stim patch ran out. She wasn’t sure she could tolerate a second dose. At least the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Lifting, she drifted ahead of the pride, watching her enviro-panel, reading wind, calculating distance and scent drift. Set the skimmer gently down, half hidden by hawthorn scrub. Just hidden enough, she hoped, to make him think that he might have missed her last time, when he dropped the girl. The meat-hunter’s daughter.

Glancing at her watch, she planted the thick disk of the bio-signature generator in a clump of hawthorn, and hiked downwind, zooming in on the spot with her glasses. She had keyed the link to the lioness’s ID, figured she had about fifteen minutes before she’d need to return and move the skimmer. The lions knew her scent, so hopefully her presence wouldn’t disturb their regular hunting routine.

Five minutes left. She started to get to her feet to relieve her thigh muscles, when she caught the faintest whisper of disturbed air, like the wings of an owl. She froze, eyes fixed on the landscape beyond the grounded skimmer. A vague shape of matte black blocked her view of grass and shrubs. A military shadow field, of course.

She didn’t see him get out of the shadowed skimmer, but of course, he would also be using a chameleon field. Sure enough, a clump of sun dried grass winked out for a moment, then reappeared. He knew where she was – or where he thought she was. He was being cautious.

She had not prayed to any gods for a long time. Not since she had handed over her young daughter to the World Council Force sponsorship coordinator. Gods were like lions, they belonged to the old world. But now she bent her head, prayed that those old, dying gods would gather wind, scent, instinct and make one thing right in the old way.

He did not fear the lions. She could see it in his preoccupied focus on the clump of brush where she had hidden the generator. They were just park amusements, useful as a movie prop, able to kill a helpless and unarmed girl. Not a threat to him. He had a gun, after all. She bared her teeth at his hubris. It would please the old gods.

The lioness charged in a rush of motion where no motion had existed. The man spun, hand coming up. Light flared and the lioness tumbled, regained her feet in an instant and with a leap, her front feet hit his shoulders, knocking him flat, her claws digging in to hold him. He had time for a choked cry before her jaws closed on his throat. A second lioness charged in, taking him by the thigh. Dust rose, white in her night-vision, as he thrashed, strangling slowly. The lion grunts and chesty growls were the only sound. The other members of the pride had circled in, tearing his belly open before he had quite died.

Tahira started as something moved beside her. The meat hunter squatted silently next to her, her posture intent, not speaking. A loop of intestine gleamed wetly. He had stopped struggling, had finally died. The lioness who had taken him stood up, bit at his dead shoulder and shook her head heavily. She walked a few steps away from the feeding pride, snarled as one of the males took a step toward her, lashed out at him. Her strike was weak, wobbly, and her hindquarters swayed as she staggered away from the others.

“She’s dying,” Tahira said softly. “He shot her.” Her eyes widened as she noticed the faint striping on the lioness’s shoulders. This was not the old one. This was one of the younger animals, the ones that were beginning to resemble their Pleistocene ancestors. She pointed her link at it. Yes, this was the oldest of the younger females, the one who had been pushing the old lioness of late. As she watched the pride feeding, she spotted the old lioness, noticed that she was limping. Not much, but it had been enough to let the beta lioness take over.

Perhaps the old mare had kicked her, when the pride had taken her foal. Tahira let her breath out slowly, pain beginning to seep through the stim’s numbness. Maybe that limp would heal and the lioness would keep her rank now, maybe not. The next female in rank was timid, not likely to challenge her soon.

She might keep her leadership.

For a time.

Tahira got to her feet, feeling shaky to her bones. “You should leave now. Take his skimmer. It got him through the boundary, it will take you out. Sell it quickly. Just in case. I will erase your entry from Security.”

The meat hunter faced her, her expression enigmatic, the years, the past, graven into her weathered face. “What about you?”

“I have some things to fix yet.” She met the woman’s eyes. They reminded her of African sky, blue, dry, and empty. “Your part is over.”

For a moment the woman didn’t move. Then she lifted a finger to her forehead in a salute, turned and strode through the brush to the man’s skimmer. A moment later it lifted and vanished.

The pride had settled down to serious feeding now and already the scavengers had begun to gather. One of the wild dogs darted in to snatch a scrap, then fled, butt tucked as a young male charged. She could come back in a couple of days, pick up any last evidence. Record the young lioness’s death as an official euthanasia.

She limped to the skimmer, washed by waves of weakness, hoping she wouldn’t fall off before she got back to Administration.

A red icon winked on the control panel. A Security alert. Muttering a curse because she would have thought the meat hunter was more careful than that, Tahira touched it.

Official intrusion with legal permission, contact estimate five minutes.

Tahira leaned against the skimmer and closed her eyes. Legal permission. He got his warrant after all? She waited for the whisper of the grounding skimmer.

“Tahira.” Shawn’s voice sounded harsh. “What the hell is going on? You’ve got lions right behind you. Eating something.”

He was afraid. Her lips twitched and she almost smiled. “They’re busy. They won’t bother us. I think I need a ride.” She forced her eyes open. “I’m not sure I can get the skimmer back on my own. Did you come to arrest me?”

“Damn right.” He appeared beside her, watching the lions. “Hospital first, I think.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” She forced herself straight, looked him in the face. “Did you access that link? Buy the video?”

“Yes.” He looked briefly away.

“The man who dropped them here . . .” She pointed with her chin toward the lions. Mistake. The world began to turn slowly.

“You’re sure?”

She couldn’t read his expression. “Yes. Take this.” She handed him the stunner from the skimmer. “I don’t think the lions will bother me, but if one does, this will stop it.” She walked away before he could react, circled around to reach the dead lioness, one eye on the feeding lions. They knew she was there, paid as little attention as they gave the coy-dogs that had gathered. She took the tissue sample quickly, dropped it into a collection bag and returned with the last ounce of her strength.

She was done. She let him take over, gave in and let the slowly turning landscape speed up until it swept her away. Was aware of jostling, a sense of speed, a low muttered monologue of cursing. Faded in and out of lights and bustle and the dim distant knowledge in the back of her brain that this must be the resort medical facility. Someone was arguing loudly, right over her. It hurt her head and she retreated into darkness.

When she opened her eyes it was light, daylight bright, and her mouth felt like Preserve riverbed in a drought.

“They want you to drink this.” Shawn leaned into view, holding a plastic squeeze-bag of yellow-green liquid with a drinking tube.

She sucked at the liquid, winced, and swallowed. There was no way to make electrolytes taste good.

“The bullet did a lot of soft tissue damage but missed anything important,” he said mildly. “Made a big hole though. They left some drains in.”

She peered at the bandages swathing her left arm. It didn’t hurt, but that would probably change when the meds wore off. “Can I leave?”

“I think they’ll let you go if you sign all kinds of waivers absolving them from blame.”

“And do we go to jail from here?”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “That depends. We can talk about it.”

He was right about waivers. She signed and retinaed a half-dozen absolutions of all liability but finally they carted her to the entry in a motorized chair and let her escape. Shawn offered her his arm and she leaned on it. Harder than she thought she would need to. He was driving a small, rather scuffed up electric. His private car? “You’re not on duty?” She realized he was wearing a casual sun shirt and khakis. “Your day off?”

“My day off.” He slid into the driver’s seat, touched on the air-conditioning and sat there as the hot interior air cooled. “Want to tell me?”

“And if I don’t?”

He shrugged. Turned those dry, blue eyes on her. “I guess I could still arrest you on suspicion of being an accessory to a murder.”

“I am that.” And she told him, leaning back against the still-warm plastic of the seat as the car hummed to life and Shawn drove her back to the Preserve. She told him the whole story from her comments on the tour bus, to her ambush by the meat hunter and the arrival of the vid maker.

He didn’t say a word.

She finished as they entered the ornate gates of the Preserve and she closed her eyes, exhausted by the telling, her shoulder starting to hurt now with a muffled throb that promised worse to come.

“A meat hunter.” Shawn parked in the afternoon shade cast by the building’s solar panels. “I’m surprised you don’t want me to go after her.”

“Why?” Tahira opened one eye. “Her world is as dead as mine is. There is no wild meat to hunt any more. Not the kind that made her a living.”

“She could come back to poach.”

“She won’t.”

“You are so sure.”

“I am.”

Shawn sighed. “So you’ve achieved your justice. The lions killed the man the same way they killed the girl. And now you want me to just walk away and call it over. Do you think that ends it, Tahira?”

The bitterness in his voice surprised her. “Of course that doesn’t end it.” She opened her eyes, faced him. “He was not the boss. He was simply a tool. It’s way too big a business. I doubt it will ever end, Shawn.” She opened the electric’s door one-handed, amazed at how heavy it was. “Our species is addicted to death. And now, on the brink of conquering it, we love it even more.” She pulled herself to her feet as he came around to help her and amazingly managed not to sway. “But this ends it here.”

“Are you sure of that, too?”

“Yes.” She looked him in the face. “I am.”

He lifted his eyes, fixed them on the dry blue sky above. “Even if you die?”

“If I die, the information to end it here will come to you.” She started for the entrance, judging the distance. Maybe too far. When he caught up to her, took her arm, she let him, leaned on him. He was angry, radiating like a range fire.

“I guess I’d just like to know who made you judge and jury.”

The door scanned her hardware and opened, breathing cool air over them. The water wall filled the building with the scent of rain and she took a deep breath, happy in this single moment of sensation. “I appointed myself.” She sank onto one of the floor cushions. “There is beer in the refrigerator. Why don’t you bring us each one? Since you are not on duty?”

He did, handed her the tall glass, sat down across from her, his expression thoughtful. He was older than Jen, his face lined with his years of work. She studied the lines around his eyes, seeing the echoes of old laughter, of sorrow, of life.

“What does this Preserve mean to you?” He looked up suddenly.