Part 2

Smith helped me pull the cart up a ramp to the planked walk of the outer wall. Guards stood at intervals and peeped through infra-red goggles or checked strange instruments. Some laughed after we passed. We crossed a bridge to the second story of a log building. Smith beat the door with his knuckles, until a girl, an adolescent edition of Betty Toal, opened it. "Fine weather, Minimum," she said.

Smith asked, "Dominant Rasmussen here?"

"Yes--" The girl became aware of what I was and backed away to a legal ten foot length.

The guard helped deposit my cases inside the doorway. A huge, white-haired old man lumbered into the hall. He supported his obesity with a wooden rod curved at one end. "Dominant Alcaeus Rasmussen," said Smith, "Alien Hunter Ube Kinlock."

Rasmussen's Maggiese nose tilted at the end so that the nostrils almost paralleled the plane of his puffy cheeks. His chins concealed his neck. "Was warned would come here," he grunted. "Eat. Then we talk of the Hog."

I said, "Thanks," and turned to Smith, but he was gone.

Rasmussen ushered me into a wood-sheathed room. A toothie thrust his striped head from a crack, squeaked once, and withdrew. About fifteen people sat at a table. Sighting me, one woman screamed, and all the females, including a girl about eight, pushed back their stools. "Sit down," Rasmussen commanded. "Will be no menace here."

Rasmussen placed me at a small table in the corner and occupied a stool opposite me. He said, "Ordinances forbid close contact between alien males and Maggiese females. Eating together, too dangerous." A young man set a plate and cup before Rasmussen, who said, "Emilio, serve the alien also."

Emilio furnished me with a bewildering assortment of bowls, cups, plates, and utensils, while glowering as if I had stolen his x-tops. The soup smelled somewhat like the preservative on the city walls, but I was too starved to care. "Do you know Betty Toal?" I took time to ask. "I seem to have caused her trouble with the authorities. I want to help her if possible."

"Needs no help," Rasmussen said. "Has reached her goal. With your assistance, has broken laws until must be deported. Was scheduled to marry the pilot, Olaf Ypsilanti."

"Marry Ypsilanti!" I choked on the soup.

"A fine man," Rasmussen said. "The girl's reaction is odd."

I started on a mixture containing cubes of meat and exotic vegetables. The people at the large table had stopped eating and fixed me with disconcerting stares. I said, "It's hard to tell you people apart."

"Those are children, grandchildren, in-laws," Rasmussen explained. "All true Maggiese resemble each other. Is the Joe Nordo Plan. Someday, except for age and sex, all Maggiese will be alike."

"I thought Planet Maggie had only been settled two centuries. You surely must have developed new genetic techniques for everyone to be this much alike so soon."

"No. Hereditary Controls Council hunts new ways. Attempt to count and identify human genes with devices they invented. Plan all marriages and calculate appearance of offspring. Much guessing. Still have Mongoloids, blonds, even red hair." Rasmussen glanced at my red hair.

I ate coarse bread and drank juice with unknown flavors. I asked, "Why make such a bother over looks?"

Rasmussen frowned. "Joe Nordo said, 'To be alike is to be free.' When men are exactly the same, envy, suspicion, prejudice, other evils vanish. Already Planet Maggie stands alone. Only true democracy in the Explored Galaxy. Jury is chosen by the people. Ordinances these men provide must pass in referendum with a ninety per cent majority. Farmers, of course, do not vote. His Perfectness the Joe Nordo Ideal is but an honored figurehead, the man who most resembles Joe Nordo."

I said, "The people actually vote for these stu--uh, for these Ordinances?"

"Of course. Their right."

Outside, the sky was now completely dark except when streaked with chains of lightning. Rumbling thunder rattled the windows.

VII: FIVEDAY NIGHT

After dinner, Rasmussen led me to his "den." I had expected a cave, but it was another wooden room. The advance winds of the gathering storm stirred the cloth around an open window and ruffled papers on a carved desk. I turned left, jumped convulsively, and clawed for imaginary weapons.

A pair of tiny red eyes peered from beneath flopping ears. From either side of a truncated snout, two yellow tusks jutted upward. Grayish-brown, creased, tuberculated skin sprinkled with stiff hairs covered a monstrous head at least a meter and a half wide and two meters long.

I recovered enough to see that the horror was mounted on a plaque above a stone arch. Rasmussen eased his enormous body into a strong chair. He gestured at the head and explained, "A sow. The Hog is larger. Snout is almost solid bone. Skin two inches thick, filled with horny plates harder than many metals. Almost impervious to our hissers."

I said, "I've seen strange animals, but this thing--Maybe it's the width of the jaw, and the close-set eyes, and the way the snout tilts up. It looks like something horribly human." Suddenly, I realized that it resembled Rasmussen.

The old hunter closed the window against the first cool breeze I had breathed on the planet. Rain splashed the transparent panes. Rasmussen said, "Maggiese hogs are not true swine. No one has examined them much. Who cares? Could be marsupials or unique. Similar appearance is an evolutionary coincidence, quite often seen in the Explored Galaxy."

He pointed to an antique weapon in a rack with other arms. "Only rocket rifle on the planet. Found it in the museum. Two hundred years old. Some of the rockets fired. Others were duds. Used it to kill five sows and twenty pigs. Now the rockets are all gone. Type is no longer made. In any event, laws forbid importing. Trapped, poisoned, shocked, and shot the other four sows and twenty-one pigs. Betty Toal--do not understand her--Betty Toal killed four pigs."

I said, "She mentioned that she was a hunter." I considered Toal for a moment and asked, "How may I contact her?"

"If insist, shall show you her house tomorrow."

Since the old man evidently disapproved of the topic, I abandoned it and examined the rocket rifle, a clumsy device that seemed ready to fall apart if anyone dared to fire it. I said, "I'd think you'd import all sorts of weapons when the hogs have killed 237 people."

"Two hundred thirty-eight. Killed a Farmer this afternoon. We follow the Joe Nordo Plan. Nothing may draw us from it. Build comfortable houses not used elsewhere for a thousand years. Our food has not been known out there for five dark centuries. Speech is simple, not slurred and wordy." Rasmussen removed a long weapon with a graceful wooden stock from the rack and said, "Had some success with firearms."

"Firearms?"

Rasmussen displayed a metal tube with an attached point. "Nitrocellulose in this shell explodes. Drives the bullet through the barrel."

"Noisy," I supposed. "Don't you have some big ones mounted on carriages?"

Rasmussen juggled the firearm but avoided dropping it. Deep wrinkles creased his brow. Thunder rumbled and shook the window. The hunter said, "Is the largest yet made."

I said, "Tuesday--no, Fourday morning, when the shuttle was grounding, I saw some men pushing something with a long tube, and wheels, and trailing pieces. I was too spacesick to care about it, but it could have been one of these firearms, a big one."

"Where?"

"They were putting it in a building in a corner of the wall. Near the gate facing the spacefield, I think."

Rasmussen sat looking at me and chewing his lips. He shook his fat head and purred, "Must be tired. Must rest until morning. Then we find the Hog."

I protested that I had questions about the habits of the Hog, but he took my arm and escorted me into the hall. He pointed and said, "Your room and luggage." The floor boards groaned under his weight, as he passed through a doorway.

The room contained only a cabinet, chair, and bed. A smaller adjoining room was furnished with what seemed to be cleansing facilities. I finally found Emilio, or his twin brother, and had him explain the Maggiese system, which involved lathering and soaking in a small tank of water.

Refreshed, I reviewed the sketchy research I had done on Henderson's Globe, Spica System. With no time to indulge in ponderous interstellar communication before leaving for Maggie, I had gathered but few facts, and they might not apply, since Rasmussen said the Hog was not actually a hog.

I projected a booklet with the mighty title, _Initial Experiments in Earthian Swine_ (Sus scrofa) _Production on Freesphere_. If hogs were as delicate as this booklet pretended, I wondered how a similar animal could become an indestructible man-eater. On Freesphere, hogs wallowed only in clean plastic tanks and lived under healthful domes. Their food was carefully compounded and measured. They were constantly inoculated and treated for diseases, some of which were, even today, virtually incurable. They were protected from temperature extremes and from sunburn and sunstroke. The booklet warned that over-exertion or over-exposure to sunlight might cause a hog to have convulsions. It sadly concluded that Freesphere was unsuited to hogs, except under the most expensive conditions.

I read further in my one-volume edition of Witos' classic _Natural History of Ninety Planets_, but even that old-time genius was uncertain about the Maggiese hog. He suggested that, unlike omnivorous swine, it was totally carnivorous, rooting up small burrowing animals or catching larger forms, and speculated that, under standard gravity, it might weigh twelve metric tons. Galactic Government zoologists listed the hog as a probable beast.

Whatever the Hog's nature, I felt that I could kill him by the most effective method of destroying nearly any life form, perforation. The Maggiese had failed by using crude weapons.

VIII: SIXDAY MORNING

Several rodents crossed the gravel street. I said, "These toothies are a problem, aren't they?"

Rasmussen wore a mottled green and brown sack and stockings gartered above his knees. An eyeshade projected from his forehead. "Not so many as once," he panted. "Sometimes gnawed down houses."

Rasmussen carried a firearm on a strap over his shoulder. I carried the hisser, the robotic, and a pack containing many items often useless but sometimes essential. Joe's Sun glinted into our eyes through cracks in the wall ahead and sparkled on puddles of rainwater.

"Betty Toal lives here," Rasmussen said. He struck his stick against a door in a long, log structure with identical doors spaced at ten-meter intervals. He tried the handle and said, "Not home. Probably has gone to her garden."

We walked on down the street. I said, "An air hunt will be best. It's a good way with large animals."

Rasmussen said, "Saw the wrecked jetcopter at the field? The shuttle would be a poor way to hunt."

"No aircraft on the whole planet? Well, then, a car."

Rasmussen pointed to a man passing on a muscle-powered vehicle. "Have tricycles, but am too old to pedal. Ride a tractor to likely places. Then will be afoot. Mine are flat."

"On foot!"

An uncanny contrivance, such as I had never imagined possible, waited near a wide gate. It had twelve wheels, four small ones in front and in back, and four large, lugged ones in the center. A confusion of rods and bars connected the lugged wheels to double cylinders on either side. Smoke puffed from a pipe atop the round body of the vehicle.

A tired, worried, red-haired man stood on a rear platform and adjusted levers. Although he contrasted completely with the standard Maggiese, he seemed familiar, I then realized that here was a man resembling me.

A woman, dressed in a costume like Rasmussen's, sat in one of the front seats. The old hunter sighed and said, "Fine weather, Betty Toal."

Toal smiled and said, "Low, Rasmussen. Low, Kinlock."

"Why break Ordinances," Rasmussen cried, "until must be deported? Ypsilanti is a fine man. Must go to this extreme? Reconsider the marriage. Let me try to use any influence may have, to re-instate you."

"No, I'm leaving," Toal said.

"Are you all right, Toal?" I asked. "I apologize for causing you trouble. If there--"

"No, no, Kinlock. It was deliberate on my part."

Rasmussen said, "Must not change your Maggiese accent. Even if you go, must remember our ways."

"People out there don't speak Maggiese, and I'm going to stop it. I've been practicing for a year."

Rasmussen said, "At least, Betty, do not make this hunt. Shot pigs, but this is the Hog. Must stay."

"I'm going with you."

"Ordinance 36 forbids male aliens and Maggiese females to ride in the same tractor."

"I no longer obey Ordinances."

Rasmussen puffed out his cheeks and expelled air in an irritated hiss. He glowered at Toal and me and said, "Cannot insure the safety of either. Climb aboard, then, Alien Kinlock."

Toal moved over in the back seat. I heaved my weapons and pack to the platform. Rasmussen took the front seat. I followed him up the short ladder and sat beside Toal. Her elbows were nude, but leather stockings concealed her knees and ankles.

"This is a tractor?" I said. "What is it?"

"Steam engine," Toal answered. "Burns crude oil. Water is carried in this tank around the boiler. The steam pushes the pistons, and the rods turn the wheels."

I shook my head in amazement and wondered why no one had invented a steam engine before.

The red-headed man, who wore a Farmer brooch, walked alongside. "Dominant, the tractor has full steam," he said. "Fire is on automatic."

Rasmussen sneered at the Farmer. "Hope, Yuko, no more failures occur. Your work has been poor."

Yuko touched his forehead with extended fingers and stepped back. Rasmussen pulled a lever and gripped the steering wheel. With a slow chugging noise, the tractor crept forward and, at a rapidly increasing speed, moved through the gate and a gap in the outer defenses.

"Rather noisy!" I yelled.

"Yes!" Toal screeched. "The Hog will hear us miles away!"

"What are miles?"

"A mile is 5,280 feet!"

"I see!"

Trailing a plume of steam, the tractor puffed somewhat majestically along a dirt road. Toal began a question and answer game, conducted in shouts, about things and affairs in the Explored Galaxy. She asked about tridie, the ultrabrain, astraplanes, and Galactic Government. She asked for more information about marriage customs and about the reasons for women's fashions always concealing elbows, knees, and ankles while often providing scant cover elsewhere. Some of her questions were difficult to answer.

* * * * *

The tractor now rumbled through a woodland, rank with gnarled trees crowned by gray-green leaves, and abruptly rolled into open ground with a small, walled village in the center. Rasmussen stopped the tractor. The torsos of several men appeared over the top of the wall. They looked odd, for a moment, since two were bony, and one had black hair.

Rasmussen yelled, "Have you seen the Hog?"

A skinny man said, "Fine weather, Dominant. Heard him at 25:30 toward the swamp."

Rasmussen steered the tractor along a road that circled the wall. Nausea from the vehicle's motion crept over me. The ride was especially disconcerting, since the four leading wheels pivoted under the seats and gave an illusion that the tractor was leaving the road on curves.

"What is that place?" I shouted. "I thought Joetropolis was the only town!"

"Young Farmer School!" Toal yelled.

"What's it for?"

"Young Farmers come here for training when they're five! At twenty-two, they're sterilized and go back to Joetropolis!"

I shuddered. "This perfect democracy is a bit harsh!"

"The people vote for Ordinances!"

"Farmers don't vote!"

"No, but their parents do! Suppose it is horrible!" Toal admitted.

Rasmussen turned to us, leaving the tractor to find its own way along the twisting road. He said, "No need to discuss customs with the alien!"

"Watch it!" I yelled.

Rasmussen rotated and steered the tractor away from a jumble of boulders. I perspired against the wind of our motion. Toal said, "Children can choose to be deported! Their parents advise them! The parents can be sterilized and stay here, or they can become aliens and be deported with the child! Must not have other children if one is suspected of being a Farmer! Must wait five years!"

Rasmussen brought the quaking machine to a halt on the crest of the highest hill yet encountered. The cultivated fields were behind us. Here, stumps covered the slopes, but young trees had been planted in rows to replace the vanished forest. Silence rang in my ears. Then I heard calls and whistles from unknown wildlife.

Stiffly, the fat hunter descended to the dirt track. Pulling my sunhat down and lowering the screen against the increasing heat and glare, I followed. I wore my lightest oversuit, but it seemed as heavy as frigid zone garb. The only blessing of the environment was that no insects or related pests were in evidence.

Rasmussen walked to a patch of plants with round, purple-veined leaves and yellow stems. He pointed with his carved stick and began a lecture. "On the western skyline, the sea. There, the cliffs. That silver thread, inland about three miles, the waterfall into the Baby Maggie River. Three hundred yards wide, full of rocks and currents. Misty cloud in the east is the Joe Junior Swamp, where the cliffs end. Swamp extends along the coast ten miles." He extended both arms and proclaimed, "Joe Nordo chose this protected peninsula to settle. Ocean full of reefs, flesh-eating fish, reptiles, currents."

I asked, "Then how did the hogs come in?"

"That gap in the cliffs. Caused by an earthquake ten years ago. Three years ago, His Perfectness suggested the landslide be used to bring timber. Pontoon bridge was floated across the river. Farmers began leveling the landslide to make a road. One night, the hogs came down the path. Sank many pontoons in crossing. Ate two Minimums and one Dominant who were stationed there."

Moving back to the tractor, Rasmussen said, "Walled the gap and removed the bridge. Hogs ravaged the land. These three years have been the worst, since the grizzly apes--" He heaved himself into the seat. "Must move on. Cannot hunt all day and camp here."

I climbed up beside Toal. "What about apes?" I said, but the old man started the tractor, and the noise smothered my question.

Rasmussen steered downhill, and, at the bottom of the slope, pulled a lever to its limit. The puffing of the machine became a throbbing blast as speed increased. "What are grizzly apes?" I shouted at Toal.

"The apes were all killed in Joe Nordo's time!" Toal screamed. "Threw rocks and hit people with clubs!"

"GG doesn't like that!" I said. "You can't exterminate an intelligent species! You're supposed to negotiate with them!" I put my hand on Rasmussen's shoulder and bellowed, "Please slow it down!"

The old man awarded me a deadly glance. The steam engine's wild panting subsided, and the tractor crept along the road, which had dwindled to tracks sometimes covered by red-tinged grass.

I said, "I hear that Joe Nordo wiped out some intelligent apes."

Rasmussen said, "Betty Toal, no reason to teach this alien history. Killing the apes was necessary. A menace."

"So's the Hog," I said, "but I don't fully believe the Jury's claim that he has no intelligence. He's been clever enough to avoid being killed for three years."

Rasmussen braked the tractor so quickly that I fell across the front seat. He growled, "Hogs killed my first wife and two sons. Killed nearly all my old friends. Am the oldest man left on the planet."

Toal said, "Killed my parents. Everyone in Joetropolis lost friends or relatives to the hogs." Tears welled from her blue eyes and slid down her brown cheeks. "More horrible," she sniffed, "that most were eaten. Why should you care for the Hog, Kinlock? Hunting is your business. Get a large fee for destroying him."

"Shall return?" Rasmussen snarled.

Toal produced a square of white cloth, wiped her eyes, and then blew her nose. "No," I sighed wearily. "Show me the Hog--any range up to two thousand meters--and I'll kill him."

IX: SIXDAY AFTERNOON

We ate lunch under the convoluted branches of a vinetree, having left the tractor on a trail a kilometer away. Surrounding us, except for occasional clearings filled with red plants, the great vines twisted in a confusion penetrated only by paths as entwined as the trees.

Rasmussen had scarcely spoken since our debate. Toal remained icy, although the air was asphyxiating. In an effort to keep the halting conversation from the Hog, until my companions were calmer, I said, "I still don't understand how Maggiese came to look so much alike in only two hundred years."

Rasmussen grunted and chewed a bread and meat ply. Toal studied the green birds that chased through the fringed leaves of the vinetree.

I said, "I recall a few figures about heredity. The chance of any single individual being born from a union is about one in two hundred fifty million. If the parents differed in only twenty dominant genes, this individual would be one of more than a million possible variations. It's hard to produce specific humans to order.

"Say you're trying to rid a population of an undesirable trait. If twenty-five per cent of the people show the trait, and none are allowed offspring, it would still take three centuries to bring the incidence of the trait down to one per cent, because many people would carry it as a recessive characteristic. Then, mutations may be undetected for generations and upset the whole system. Joe Nordo must have--"

"There he is!" Rasmussen gasped.

"Joe Nordo?" I said stupidly.

"The Hog!" Rasmussen produced an optical instrument consisting of a small telescope for each eye. He said, "Two hundred yards off!"

I jumped up, tripped over a root, fell, crawled to my equipment, and yanked out the quadpod. I set the quadpod close to Rasmussen, lifted the robotic into position, and threw the switches to maximum. "One shot," I predicted. "Explosive pellets with nitrobenzene. Where is he?"

Rasmussen pointed. I swung the robotic and illuminated the sight. In a little clearing, the Hog rooted at a clay bank. His scaly, dull red skin hung in folds and creases about leg joints and shoulders. His straight back terminated in a twitching tail at one end and, at the other, sloped abruptly in a short neck that lowered the snout almost to the ground.

I adjusted the sight to precise focus and reached for the main switch. Something exploded close to my left ear.

"Shot the monster!" Rasmussen cried. He thrust another tube into his firearm and raised it to his shoulder. A thin puff of smoke and a second explosion burst from the barrel. "Again!" Rasmussen exulted.

"What are you doing?" I roared. "I was ready to kill him, and you started exploding that thing!"

The clearing was now empty. A nearly human squeal lingered in the warm air.

"Go find the carcass," Rasmussen said. "Am too old for hiking. The Hog did not stay long in the sun. Were too slow."

Mumbling, I pulled a ranger from my pack and swept the forest with it. I stopped. In an arbor formed by vinetree branches, I saw part of the Hog's head and forequarters at a range of 523 meters. "He's on his feet," I said.

"Where?" Rasmussen gasped.

"One shot," I promised. I jacked the robotic higher and once more focussed the sight. I threw the main switch. The weapon hummed. The barrel moved slightly upward and to the left. The robotic made a spitting noise.

Even as the thud of the exploding pellet reached us two seconds later, I was choking, "A-an antelope, or something! It jumped in front of the Hog. The pellet hit it! That's the only way a robotic can miss--if something covers the target. This is the first--"