Part 3

Rasmussen laughed. "Perhaps will die from my bullets," he chuckled. "Go look for him, if not afraid. Incidentally, it is unlawful for an alien to kill game on Maggie."

I searched the trees with the ranger, but saw no life except a flock of birds disturbed by the blast. I shouldered my pack, picked up the hisser, and stalked down the hill into the vines.

Rasmussen called, "Be back in two hours. Must return before dark."

* * * * *

Stumbling over roots and pushing through low tunnels, I tried to reach the clearing in which the Hog had first been sighted. At a sound behind me, I whirled and almost hung myself in a looping tendril. Betty Toal, carrying a slender firearm, moved gracefully in my wake.

"What's wrong with that old man?" I snarled at her. "Is he jealous because he's the great hunter, and I'm after the Hog? I'd have killed the Hog if he hadn't ruined my first try."

Toal said, "He's proud. He's vain about his hunting. I think he hates the Hog too much to let him escape. Of course, he protested to the Jury about calling an outside hunter. Probably resents you."

"Yes," I said. "You'd best go to the tractor with him. I don't like hunting on foot in a forest. I never do it if I can use another method."

"No, you need a guide, although Ordinances 37, 38, and 42 forbid a Maggiese female to enter a forest with a male alien."

We smiled at each other. "I'm sorry about this morning," I said. "I didn't intend any insult to the memories of your family and friends. I didn't realize what the Hog had done to you."

"It's all right, Kinlock."

"We'd best go on. You'll be about as safe with me as anywhere, if the Hog circles."

"No, this way."

Toal dodged in front of me and undulated rapidly through the vines. I kept tripping and catching my head or the hisser barrel in the tendrils. We, at length, stepped through an arch into a clearing.

A horde of striped toothies swarmed around a clay bank that had been excavated until cross sections of tunnels were exposed. A hundred little eyes stared. One or two toothies even stood erect on hind feet for a better view. One rodent squeaked. Others answered. Some went into holes in the bank, and others vanished among the matted red flowers that filled the clearing.

I examined the great cloven depressions left in the damp ground by the Hog's feet. "He was rooting for toothies," I said. "The Jury claimed he has no part in this planet's bionomics, but he's checking the toothie population." I glanced at Toal and said, "Don't start glaring like that again. I'll finish the Hog for you. He's probably the only one surviving, since the Jury says he isn't--and one old boar can't carry on the species."

I followed the footsteps of the Hog across the clearing and into the silent green corridors. Infrequent glimpses of the sky revealed darkening clouds sweeping up from the horizon. Something rumbled in the distance. "Thunder," Toal said.

Soaked with perspiration generated by the humid heat and by anticipation of meeting the Hog, I tiptoed around a vine trunk and almost stepped in the mess made by the robotic pellet that should have blasted the Hog. Toal said, "A jumpalong."

The animal, a brown thing with four horns, had been blown nearly in half. The flesh around the wound had turned purple. "Stay away from it," I warned. "Nitrobenzene is potent stuff."

The Hog had departed through a tunnel of his own manufacture, penetrating the vines in a straight line for fifty meters. As I moved into the hole, lightning bathed the forest floor in green light, and thunder crackled. "Do you have rain every day all summer?" I complained.

"Yes," Toal said, "but this is only spring."

Big raindrops splattered against the canopy of leaves. I said, "Do you want to go back? A thunderstorm's not an ideal time to hunt."

"You'd have a cold trail by tomorrow. The Hog may be badly wounded."

I breathed deeply and peered down the dim tunnel. "You watch the rear," I said, whispering for some reason.

Lightning flickered through the vegetation in nerve-racking patterns. The leaves no longer turned the rain. I told myself I was unhinged to hunt the Hog, when hearing him would be impossible, but I walked slowly forward.

The Hog's tunnel broke into a path marked by his hoofs. The path curved back and forth, for about a kilometer, and led to rocky ground above a tumbling stream. I removed a folded robe from my pack, shook it out, and gave it to Toal. "Put that on," I said. "You'll be soaked if we go out there."

"But what about you?"

"I'm already wet, and very little of it's rain."

The lightning had subsided before the increasing downpour, but, as I walked from the woods, I cringed in a reflex I had acquired after seeing a man struck on a bare plain. Water ran off my sunhat and saturated my oversuit. My non-skid boots slipped on the wet rocks.

A grumbling noise reached me through the rain. I was hoping to dismiss it as thunder, but Toal said, "The Hog."

"Where is he?" I whispered. Toal shook her head. I studied the woods, then turned back to the creek. Old, decayed stumps, piles of rotting brush and limbs, and clumps of young trees spotted the ground across the stream. Gaudy flowering plants grew in broad patches of yellow, red, and orange. Beneath the pelting rain, the warm ground extruded a low, slowly swirling mist.

* * * * *

A shrill screech echoed distantly. The hisser jumped to my shoulder, but I saw no target. Toal said, "The tractor whistle. Rasmussen wants to go."

"He said two hours," I objected. "It hasn't been two hours."

"May think hunting is useless in the rain."

"I suppose so," I sighed. "No traces on these rocks. That mist is covering the stream. I have a sniffer, but it won't pick up much from wet ground. You lead, but, if you see the Hog, drop flat to give me a shot."

We sloshed back into the wiggling path. Again the tractor whistle shrieked. We walked faster, slipping in the mud. Somewhere, the Hog grunted. We trotted.

As we reached the tunnel in the vinetrees, Toal stopped. "Listen!" she said. "Starting the tractor! Cannot leave us!"

She ran. I splashed and slid on her track, but she had a fifty meter lead before I reached the dead jumpalong. My running slowed to a tottering shuffle. I breathed in painful wheezes, and lost my sunhat, and did not bother to retrieve it.

I panted into the clearing where we had first seen the Hog. Toal waited near the clay bank. The entrenched toothies peeped from their holes. I thought we were in the wrong place, since the red flowers were now orange, but then I saw that the rain had somehow soaked the color from them, forming red pools over the clearing.

"I lost your cape," Toal said. Her breathing was only slightly rapid, but I gasped as if I had been strangled.

The Hog grunted. He grunted five times while Toal and I stood immobile. The grunting ascended to a squealing sound like, "Kyieel uhoo! Keel uhoo! Keel oo Keenlogh!"

For the first time on Planet Maggie, I shivered with cold. "Did you, did you hear th-that?" I stuttered. "What goes on? Can the Hog actually talk?"

"Talk?"

"He said, 'Kill you, Kinlock.'"

"How could he?" Toal said. "How could he know your name?"

"He's been listening," I said. Then I snickered hysterically. "That's ridiculous. Rasmussen thinks the Hog may be a marsupial, and marsupials don't talk. He hasn't any tool-grasping organs either."

Toal slogged into the vine woods. "No use running any farther," she said. "The tractor sounds as if it's half way to Joetropolis."

X: SIXDAY EVENING

The rain stopped a half hour after Joe's Sun set. Betty Toal and I were a long distance from Joetropolis and the Young Farmer School. Although Toal had insisted upon carrying the hisser in addition to her firearm, I was ready to collapse under the combined mass of my pack and the robotic, which Rasmussen had left exposed to the rain.

The Hog moved with us. Where he stalked remained impossible to tell. The darkening of night amplified the ventriloquial quality of his grunting. At times, he seemed ahead of us, occasionally he walked on either side, but, most often, he trailed close behind.

"Are you sure there's only one?" I panted. "Sounds like a herd."

In the darkness, the Hog laughed. That is, he rapidly grunted, "Huh, huh, huh, huh!"

I stopped in the middle of the dirt road and squinted at indistinct shapes. A field bordered the road on one side, and an area of fresh stumps and scattered vinetrees, the other. "Do you have any night goggles?" I asked.

"No," Toal said.

"I may have a light in my pack."

"No light! The Hog will charge it. He tracks by scent, but has poor sight."

I imagined I saw a great shape in the brush. "Let's climb a tree," I said. "There's a big vine. We'll wait until someone comes for us."

"No one will search. Ordinance 921 forbids anyone to go outside the walls at night."

"Fine. Rasmussen deliberately left us for the Hog. I can understand he may dislike me, but why you?"

"Eeet oo Keenlogh!" the Hog squealed, almost shattering my eardrums.

"The hisser!" I yelled. I dropped the heavy robotic in the mud, jerked the hisser from Toal's arms, and shoved the woman behind me. I turned on the light under the barrel.

The Hog filled the road thirty meters away. His back was at least four meters above the road.

The Hog had only one glinting red eye. The other side of his head contained a ghastly socket. Half of one ear was missing, and his lower left tusk was broken. The bizarrely upswept, upper left tusk was twice the length of the right. Reddish bristles grew, like weeds among rocks, between the bony plates covering his creased hide. With snout touching the ground, he stood on cloven hoofs too small for his oily, swelling body. A stifling stench emanated from him. He moved.

"Run!" I barked. Pellets swished from the hisser's barrel. Some actually rebounded from the Hog's neck. I shot at the charging monster's skull. The hisser pinged empty. The Hog's tusks slashed upward.

I squawked like a space-happy maniac as a tusk ripped into my oversuit. I tumbled into the air and bounced through the branches of the nearby vinetree.

Hanging stunned in a snarl of creepers, I heard sharp cracks from Toal's firearm. The Hog squealed in rage. "Run, Toal!" I wheezed. "He's pellet-proof!"

The Hog stopped squealing. Mud splashed and brush broke.

"Ube Kinlock," Toal cried, "where are you?" Her cries became a mourning wail. I heard her stumbling in the undergrowth.

"Up here," I groaned. "Up here."

"Oh! Don't move. May have broken bones. Found your lantern." A light flashed across the road and countryside, then moved up the tree. "Badly injured?" Toal called.

Dangling in the vines, I became aware that I throbbed and burned all over. "Don't think so," I said. "He tossed me."

The light swayed. Toal crouched on a broad, living rope slightly above me. She unclipped the light from the neck of her sack and held it close to me. "Anything broken?" she asked.

"I don't know," I moaned. "How can anything so big move that fast?"

"You are scratched and bruised." Toal pulled apart a long rip in my oversuit. "Side is bleeding," she said. "Have to get you down."

"What about the Hog?"

"Ran. You hurt him, Kinlock. Blood on the road."

"Probably mine. A hundred pellets!" I sighed. "He kept coming."

"Said hissers won't stop him. Must cut that vine around your ankle."

Toal put her hand to the back of her neck and pulled it away clutching a small knife. She sawed at the vines. Far away, the Hog grunted, but the sounds had a new, bubbling quality. Toal said, "Going back to the swamp."

I said, "He can talk. He told me he would eat me."

XI: SIXDAY NIGHT

At about 26:30 o'clock, according to Toal, we crawled under the electric wires across the road and reached the walls of Joetropolis. The Young Farmer School had refused to open its gates because of six different Ordinances.

Most of the clouds had cleared away, but the dark nebula hung dim and threatening overhead. While Toal searched for a signal button, I--a collapsing hulk of cuts, bruises, tatters, and disgust--sat in the road. With one foot, the Hog had wrecked ten x-tops, three coupons worth of robotic. I had been unable to find the hisser. The only whole pieces of equipment that we recovered were the light, a water pump, the sniffer, one can of S-rations, and a tube of pellets.

Lights suddenly spotted us. A man loudly intoned, "Why break Ordinance 921?"

"This is Recessive Betty Toal and Alien Hunter Ube Kinlock," Toal said. "Open the gate!"

The man said, "Not till morning. The Hog might enter."

Toal said, "The Hog is in the swamp. Kinlock wounded him. Kinlock should see a doctor. We've walked seventeen miles. Throw us a rope, if you won't open the gate."

Then a voice that I recognized spoke. "Let them climb up," ordered the shuttle pilot, Olaf Ypsilanti. "Want to discuss this matter with them."

A mesh of wooden slats and plastic ropes clattered against the logs. "Let me help you, Kinlock," Toal said.

"I'm all right. You first," I said.

Toal slung her weapon and climbed up the net as if she had had no exercise for days. Ypsilanti's fleshy face appeared in the light. Roughly, he helped Toal over the sawtoothed parapet.

Slowly, I followed. No one assisted me at the top. I tore two new gashes in my ragged oversuit, and my ankles turned under me when I dropped down to the walk.

Someone turned a searchlight and illuminated the six men and one woman standing on the planks. Ypsilanti gripped Toal's wrists in his big hands. "Why treat me this way, Betty?" he asked, "Were to marry next week. Am a strong, handsome Dominant. Any female Minimum should be proud Controls Council selected me for her."

"Turn loose, Ypsilanti!" Toal said.

Ypsilanti said, "You imitate the alien's ugly accent. Have schemed to be deported rather than marry me."

Toal said, "I'd cut my throat first."

Ypsilanti released her. His voice throbbed with anger. "Would not have you! Have been in the woods with an alien!" He put his open palm in her face and shoved. Toal slammed back against the logs.

Shocked by the shuttle pilot's brutality, I swayed to my feet and grabbed his shoulder. I said, "Don't--" and then Ypsilanti's clenched hand thudded against my jaw. I flipped backward, slid on my shoulders, and stopped with my head hanging over the edge of the walk.

Although I had seen box fights in historical tridies and read of them in books, I had always supposed they belonged in mythology.

Ypsilanti said, "Galactic Government slave! You are not fit to walk on Maggie!"

It seemed that he had told me this before. I sat up. Betty Toal, with knife in hand, struggled between two guards. Ypsilanti kicked me on the leg above the knee. I seized his ankle, jerked, and let go. Yelling, the shuttle pilot toppled from the wall.

"Good! Good!" Toal cried. Blood ran in two streams from her nose. One of the guards had her knife.

Ypsilanti, covered with mud, ran up a flight of steps farther down the walkway and stalked toward us. "Hold him!" he commanded. "Will beat his head off!"

A man emerged from the shadows behind the pilot and said, "Ypsilanti, stop."

Ypsilanti whirled. He stood rigid and said, "Maximum Macready, the alien tried to murder me!"

"Nonsense. Saw you knock him down. You should not be here. Have no authority over the guards."

Maximum of the Jury Qasim Pierre Macready glared at the guards. "Release them," he said. "Alien Kinlock has been hired to kill the Hog. Must not interfere." Macready looked closely at my cuts and ripped clothing. He asked, "Any success, Alien Kinlock? Rasmussen thought the Hog got you. Came for help. Tractor had trouble, due to neglect by Farmer Yuko. Rasmussen did not reach the city before sunset. Shoot the Hog?"

Toal answered, "Kinlock shot him, Maximum. He risked his life. The Hog crawled to the swamp. We expect to find his body tomorrow."

Ypsilanti said, "She should not go with this alien."

"Has Alien Status," Macready said. "What she does is not important. If the Hog is indeed dying, is great news. Will be best proved. Kinlock, go to Doctor Izard."

Macready turned and left. I stared at Ypsilanti and the guards. They returned my scowl. Toal and I headed for the steps.

As we went down, Toal said, "You fixed Ypsilanti! If Macready hadn't come, you would have really beaten him. Ypsilanti's needed it for a long time."

"How's your nose?" I asked.

"It's almost stopped bleeding. Turn at the next corner to the doctor."

"You go about your nose. I want to ask Rasmussen a few things."

"I'll come, too," Toal said. "I'd like to watch."

She guided me through dimly illuminated streets, until we reached the wall again. We climbed the ramp and started across the steel bridge leading to Rasmussen's rooms. Something barricaded the walk.

I turned my light on the obstruction. Two toothies blinked from the top of my own baggage. Rasmussen's windows were dark.

XII: SEVENDAY MORNING

At eleven o'clock, mid-morning by Maggiese time, I leaned stiffly against the log wall of the apartmented building in which Betty Toal lived. I watched the Minimums, and Dominants, and a few Maximums pass. Some pointedly ignored me, while others gazed with hostility. Although all were potential meals for the Hog, they showed no gratitude for my attempts to help them. Sighing, I felt my more prominent bruises and wondered if I should wear a white oversuit for hunting. It was the only light clothing I had left, and I refused to consider Maggiese costume.

Astride a pedal-operated vehicle, Betty Toal rode into the street. The machine resembled the tricycles, but had five wheels with the two rear ones supporting a seat. "Low, Kinlock!" she called. "Come aboard the pentacycle."

"High, Toal. Wouldn't they give you two? I can't let you haul me all over the planet."

"Not hard with the gears."

I piled a firearm, a pouch of shells, and what remained of my pack on the rear seat and climbed in between the wheels. "That red-headed Farmer, Yuko, brought me a firearm," I said, indicating the heavy weapon with two barrels. "He said he borrowed it while Rasmussen was out."

Toal looked at the weapon and said, "If it doesn't knock you down, you'll be all right."

"Wonder why Yuko did it," I said. "Except for you, he's the first person here who's been friendly."

"You look alike, slightly. Be careful of that box of dynamite."

Toal stood on the pedals, gripped the steering bar, and propelled the pentacycle down the street. She wore a fresh green and brown sack, but no leggings.

As we swished through the gate, I said, "What's dynamite?"

"Explosive. Has nitroglycerin in it. Rasmussen killed two pigs with it. We can throw some at the Hog, if he's alive."

"He probably will be," I said. The riding was smoother and much quieter than in the steam tractor. "Explain this about looking alike," I said. "It's worried me since those emigrants boarded the Ap-GG-12C."

"Oh, that." Toal settled back on the saddle. She explained, "You and Yuko look alike. I've heard that unrelated people throughout the Explored Galaxy may look alike. They're called doubles. Even the Hog is similar to real pigs. When Joe Nordo settled Planet Maggie, decided everyone should be the same. Advertised for fifty years. Out of the billions in the Explored Galaxy, selected three hundred colonists who looked like him. Everyone on Maggie is descended from them."

"I see," I said, beginning to experience a new form of motion disturbance--pentacycle sickness. "I suspected new genetic discoveries, but it's only applied coincidence. If--"

Toal braked the pentacycle so quickly that I almost knocked her from the saddle with my head. "Tractor tracks," she said. Toal dismounted and studied the interlaced wheel marks on the damp road. "Must have been Rasmussen," she decided. "He has the only one with twelve wheels."

I said, "He's trying for the first shot again."

Toal dropped to hands and knees with her face close to the dirt. "Towing something," she said. "I don't know what. Something with two big wheels."

"You can see all that?"

"Why, yes, can't you?" Toal climbed back into the saddle.

As we started, I mumbled, "Without my instruments, I can't see anything."

The absurd cap that replaced my lost sunhat protected my face, but my neck and ears slowly fried. The breeze blew hot and searing against me. Joe's Sun burned in the deep blue sky, and the temperature climbed astonishingly.

XIII: SEVENDAY AFTERNOON

The Baby Maggie River, three hundred meters wide, gurgled and splashed over water-pocked rocks in its race to reach the Joe Junior Swamp and filter through to the sea. The cliffs, a ragged wall of dark gray rock tilted until the strata were vertical, lined the opposite bank.

Toal and I stood at the end of a track passing down between high rocks to the river. Here the pontoon bridge had once spanned the current. For two square kilometers around us, the trees had been cut and not replanted. The place was a depressing scene of gulleys, brush, stumps, and decaying limbs and sticks. A species of thorny, creeping vine with blue-green foliage predominated in reclaiming the devastated woodland.

"Surely the Hog didn't swim," Toal said.

Dehydrated and soaked with perspiration that would not evaporate, I mopped my streaming face with my sleeve. "He must have left the trail somewhere," I said.

We had again failed to find the hisser near the vinetree, but the Hog's hoofprints, usually following paths and roads, had led us to the river. I unreeled the cable of the sniffer until its nose dangled just above the ground. With the dial in my hand, I explored the edge of the road.

"That brush heap looks broken," Toal said.

I walked in the direction that she pointed. A labyrinth of stone lay along the bank. Heat waves simmered over the ground, and my feet burned in spite of thick boot soles. I reached the brush. The dial of the sniffer lighted, and the needle turned to the right. "We're on!" I said. "There's more blood. He was still bleeding after running this far. He must be dead, after all. You stay there with the pentacycle, and--"

"Had this argument yesterday," said Toal. "I'll bring part of the dynamite and go with you."

Following the pointing needle, I tripped along through the brush. Dry sticks popped under my feet, and the creepers quickly reduced my oversuit legs to rags. The trail angled across a bend in the river and moved into the shade of a vinetree grove. At first, there was open space between the trees, so that we again reached the river without difficulty. Small holes dotted the dirt beneath an overhanging rock. Toothies swarmed in and out of the burrows and squeaked excitedly.

"Some dynalene might help here," I said. "These things will eat this peninsula bare some day."

"Dynamite," Toal said. "Let them."

The sniffer led us deeper into the vine grove. The round, fringed leaves meshed into a roof that stopped the sunlight and left us walking in a sickly, greenish gloom. Abruptly, the leaves closed down to the earth, forming a rough wall of vegetation across the woods. The mouth of a tunnel opened in the mass.

Toal whispered, "The Hog goes to the swamp through there. We set traps at other tunnels. He always avoided them. It's black as a cave inside."

The sniffer pointed directly to the tunnel. Cloven hoofs had indented the ground. I said, "You go back, and--"

"No! I'll throw dynamite."

"All right. Be careful where you throw it." I grinned sickly. "Is there any way around these vines?"

"Could circle to cleared ground. Would only lead to the swamp. Can't walk in the swamp."

I put the sniffer in my pack and clipped the light to my belt. I tiptoed into the tunnel. Toal followed.

The ground was slippery underfoot, and the amount of light filtering through the massed leaves swiftly lessened. The tunnel curved gently from side to side. One hundred meters from the entrance, I could not see and turned on the light.

The Hog grunted. The ground vibrated.