Killing Rhinos

by Herb Hughes

  “I wonder why they write ‘Stop’ instead of putting a period?” Sheffie asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Oh, dear. Avery’s on the way. I’ve got to unpack and freshen up.”

  Thoughts of bed flew from Jack’s mind as Sheffie was a sudden flurry of activity in her full length, rose-colored dress, the ‘arrival’ dress she had purchased in Borderton the afternoon before starting the trip. It looked good on her and fitting for a hotel of such elegance. She appeared to feel good about herself as she whirred around the room unpacking and putting away and telling Jack what to do.

  Once their clothes and belongings were distributed to her satisfaction, Sheffie disappeared into the bathroom to ‘freshen up.’ Jack found the kitchen cabinets fully stocked and made coffee. When she finally returned, Avery had not yet arrived, so they walked out onto the small deck to drink their coffee and eat a ham roll. The wind had picked up, and clouds filled the sky on the northern horizon.

  “Isn’t the view marvelous?” Sheffie declared as she clung to Jack’s arm. “Maybe not as spectacular as from the hotel in Wilsey last night, but beautiful in a different sort of way.” She took a sip of her coffee and looked out over the city.

  “Yeah. Looks like we might have a storm on the way, though. Glad it held off long enough for us to get here.”

  They had not quite finished eating when they heard a knock.

  “Good day,” Avery greeted them. “I’m delighted to see you have arrived safely. Are you ready for your reception?”

  “Sure,” Jack nodded.

  “Yes. I’m still starved,” Sheffie added.

  The reception turned out to be the kind of thing Jack abhorred. It was given in his honor, a large affair in a private room at a posh restaurant with plenty of so-called dignitaries. It was all social niceties, polite diplomacy, and hollow conversation. Jack knew he handled these things poorly at best, and this one was on a level far higher than anything he had ever attended before. He never seemed to know what to say, so he nodded and smiled, talking only when he was forced to talk.

  They wished Jack well and shook his hand and asked the same old questions that everybody everywhere always asked the most notable active Rhino hunter in the world. They dressed in suits while Jack wore his Rhino hunter clothes, dull brown cotton with leather fronts. He felt terribly out of place and whispered this to Sheffie. She whispered back, “You’re fine, dear. Don’t worry. That’s what they expect. If you had shown up in a suit, you wouldn’t look much like the Rhino hunter who’s going to save Lisbon, now would you?”

  Jack Wheat in a suit? he thought. Ridiculous! He didn’t own a suit and wouldn’t wear it if he did. Then someone noticed his bracelet and the large area of red beads, each one representing a Rhino he had killed. The one hundred nine beads became the hot topic of the party. Everyone had to see it, to touch it, and to get a close-up look at Rhino hunter fashion. Sheffie was right. He looked like what he was supposed to be.

  There were few chairs. There was mostly finger food – which was truly exceptional – and wandering around making chit-chat. Jack found the forced conversations somewhat tedious. He was much better at eating the finger food than he was at making chit-chat. Sheffie, on the other hand, loved it. She was having the time of her life and was an immediate hit among the old men who made up the who’s who of Lisbon. Her simple beauty and captivating smile left them dreaming of youth again.

  Alexandre Andropov, the former Captain of the rangers in Borderton, walked in wearing the dress gray uniform of a ranger officer. The large, highly polished silver buttons caught the sunlight coming through the windows, glinting it about the room in a wild dance of lights as he moved.

  “Ah, Jack!” he said as he hugged the Rhino hunter then vigorously shook Jack’s hand, using both of his hands to do so. Alexandre was always hugging everyone, men and women. Jack had thought it strange all those years ago when they first met, but over time he learned it was only Alexandre’s way of showing friendship. Jack had become quite accustomed to the hugs, though if any other man tried it, there might be trouble.

  “It is so good to see you again. I apologize for being late. The mayor and I were having a conversation and lost track of time.” Alexandre was not exceptionally tall but was strongly-built. He had his share of fat, but plenty of muscle as well. His hugs would take your breath if you weren’t prepared for them. His hair was graying on the sides and disappearing on top, though doing so slowly. He seemed to smile often and to enjoy life quite a lot. “So how is my friend?” he asked Jack. “You are looking well.”

  “You, too, Alexandre. I’m doing fine. How do you like living in Lisbon?”

  “Ah, but it’s wonderful! The dinner parties, the fine arts, the cultural events; there are so many things one cannot have in a small town.”

  “I think I’ll stick to Borderton,” Jack said.

  Andropov laughed loudly as he put his heavily muscled arm around Jack’s shoulder, having to reach up to do so. “Spoken like a true man of the wilderness. But you haven’t given it a chance yet. Give us a few days. We’ll turn you into a Lisbonese gentleman yet.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Jack smiled.

  “Ah!” Alexandre said with emphasis. “Mayor Davis has arrived. Come. Let me introduce you.”

  Jack and Sheffie were introduced to a tall, gray-haired man with a sharp nose and recessed eyes. He was well-groomed and nice looking, something Jack knew was required for a politician. The mayor was flanked by a ranger carrying a full-sized laser rifle. The few laser rifles left are supposed to be used to protect the planet’s “most important assets” Jack thought to himself. He hardly considered a politician to be in that category, but he smiled and shook the mayor’s hand and tried to answer the questions and make the small talk he was supposed to make.

  The mayor thanked Jack several times for answering Lisbon’s call for help. After a few minutes of conversation, where nothing of any significance was said, the mayor smiled and excused himself, then walked over to talk to a group of city council members, men that Jack and Sheffie had already been introduced to. A moment later three men entered the room near where Jack and Sheffie and Andropov stood.

  Colonel Andropov smiled like a politician. “I'd like you to meet Jonathan McGurke,” Alexandre said as he waved his arm toward the three newcomers. The older man in the middle, so exceptionally well-dressed and so perfectly groomed that he almost didn’t look real, stepped forward. The man was dignified, polite, and smiled warmly as he extended his hand to Jack. He wore a full-length gray wool coat with black velvet collar over a crisp, smooth, spotless black suit. He had removed his hat to shake Jack’s hand and his slightly wavy hair, even after being under the hat, was still perfectly in place.

  Jack shook the offered hand and exchanged greetings, but there was something about this man that made Jack a little uncomfortable. He couldn’t put his finger on it. McGurke was somewhat older, with graying hair, slightly sagging eyelids, and small wrinkles around his eyes. Still, he was tall and quite handsome. And a broad, welcoming smile never left his face. He was friendly as well. Almost too friendly Jack thought.

  The two well-dressed men who had entered with McGurke, a tall, broad-shouldered brown man with a shaved head and a barrel-chested white man, flanked the businessman on either side but hung back and were not introduced. Personal bodyguards, Jack realized. McGurke must have been quite wealthy.

  “Jonathan is Lisbon's most prominent businessman,” Alexandre said, “He was instrumental in bringing you to Lisbon. In fact, he is personally funding your stay in Lisbon and the $200 bonus for each Rhino you kill.”

  “Thank you,” Jack said politely, doing his best to smile.

  “The least I could do to encourage someone of your reputation to assist us,” McGurke said. “I am delighted that you have seen fit to accommodate our request. My business interests are scattered throughout Lisbon, and I am afraid the Rhino plague has been exceptionally harmful. Why, I’m already more comfort
able just knowing you’re here.”

  Then, still smiling, Jonathan McGurke turned to Sheffie and took her hand then leaned forward and kissed it softly. While he held her hand with his right hand, he gently placed his left hand on top of hers. “It is, indeed, a pleasure, Miss Jarrett. I had no idea such beautiful flowers grew outside of Lisbon.”

  Jack squirmed under his leathers. What garbage! Alexandre excused himself and walked over to where the mayor and city council were in a spirited discussion. Jack watched as Sheffie and Jonathan exchanged small talk. He wanted to add to the conversation but couldn't think of anything to say. McGurke, on the other hand, appeared to be fluent in useless chatter and Sheffie appeared to be enjoying it immensely.

  “Come, my dear,” McGurke said, leading Sheffie toward the tables on the other side of the room. “Let's get something to eat.”

  The pair walked away, leaving Jack standing there holding a cup of punch that was far too sweet to drink. When McGurke and Sheffie were almost half way across the room, McGurke stopped and turned around to look back at Jack. He said, “Please, do join us Mr. Wheat.” He was still smiling broadly.

  Chapter 18

  “Ooooo… Look, look, look! It’s a creature. Exalted, wondrous self, you must look! Do you see?

  “Yes, yes. Some animal in despicable condition. How did it get in here?

  “No, no. Not an animal. Look, it is wearing clothes. But it is not one of us.

  “Rags! Filthy rags, unworthy self. Could that thing possibly be intelligent?

  “It has to be if it is wearing clothes, though they do look somewhat bedraggled. Perhaps it is some strange fashion that species chooses to wear.

  “Ragged clothes a fashion? Couldn’t be, despicable self. That doesn’t make sense. If this strange creature is a member of some intelligent species, it appears to be a poor example of same. Hardly worth sending forth to represent them.”

  Mac approached the standing framework carefully. In most of this last room it was as completely collapsed as in the other rooms, but it gradually curved upward in the near back corner, next to the aisle, where the last little bit was still slowly falling in on itself, one cube at a time. The last column of framework was fully in place, with none of the little cubes collapsed. Each of the cubes that were not yet collapsed held some gooey substance that seemed to be slowly dripping to the cube below. It had to be slow, because there were no active drips. Mac realized this was happening over a very long period of time.

  Walking to the last standing column, Crazy Mac turned and looked behind him, at the grid of dust piles where the cubes were completely collapsed. Then he looked at the partially collapsed area, where the grid was gradually coming apart. Of course! he realized. Whatever the gooey substance was, it dried into powder over time. As the framework collapsed and the transparent panels enclosing each cube came apart, the powder fell to the next cube down. When the bottom one finally collapsed, the remains from all the cubes above fell the short distance to the floor, forming a pile of powdered dust. Whatever was going on here, and it had to be something bad, something unintended, had been going on for a very, very long time. More time than Mac could imagine.

  The little clear cubular compartments were stacked twenty high in the last column, so each pile of dust must have originally been twenty of the gelatin globs. Crazy Mac marveled at this. There were so many thousands and thousands of piles of dust. Now he had to multiply them by twenty and he had seen, at best, only half the rooms!

  He turned back around and looked at the last column of framework, at the last rack where none of the globs had fallen in on the globs below. The lower globs, the ones closer to the floor, were more gray than black. Then Mac looked in the little cube at the bottom of the last rack. “What craziness is this?” he said aloud. This last cube was filled with water, or some type of clear fluid. It looked like water but this place was so strange you couldn’t be sure. It was enough to make Mac’s dry mouth pucker up. He was so thirsty.

  The strange glob in the bottom cube was larger than the rest of the globs. None of the other cubes had fluid, so Mac realized the globs shrank when the fluid dried out. All of them must have been larger at one time. Also, this last glob was entirely gray. There was no black at all. The thing was convoluted, with wrinkles everywhere. A little like… what was it? There was a memory in Mac somewhere, but he couldn’t bring it forward.

  “It’s looking at us, it is. With those eye things. That’s what they are. Eyes. Not like real eyes but like some kind of funny eyes. The creature has eyes! HELLO, CREATURE!

  “Cruzzles! Don’t shout! Keep your voice down. We don’t know if it’s dangerous. Oh, dear scooty, please make the creature go away.

  “But I don’t want it to go away. I’m lonely.

  “You’re also alive. This creature could fix that for you. And I’m sure you’d drag me in with you.

  “It would be quite difficult for it to kill me and not kill you. But notice, honored self, the creature did not react to my shouting? Hmmmm… We can hear it, but it does not appear to hear us. On that terrible, terrible day when everything went blip and we lost our beautiful dreams, perhaps it damaged the sound going out?

  “Or the thing can’t hear. It is so disgusting looking. It may be incapable of hearing. Anything that looks like that has to be incapable of reasoning. If it can’t reason, it might not be able to hear, either. We must be careful not to arouse it. Be quiet and don’t move.

  “Move?”

  Mac bent down and stared into the final cube. What was it he was trying to think of? What was the thing that was in the back of his mind? Suddenly something dropped onto Mac’s head. Startled, he jumped up and back and stumbled, sprawling onto the floor a second time.

  “What the hell!” he shouted. He looked up. Nothing. He didn’t see what had hit him. He felt of his head. There was a spot of liquid on his scalp. Blood? Had something struck him. He pulled his fingers around but the liquid was clear, not red. He looked back where he had been standing. Nothing… nothing… Ah! There it was! Directly above where he had been there was a loose tube hanging and something clear drip, drip, dripping out of it, down onto the floor where a puddle reached back under the last cube.

  He got to his feet and touched the puddle on the floor with his finger, then brought it to his face. He smelled it. Nothing. He touched it to his lips. No sensation except wet. He started to taste it then stopped with the finger millimeters from his lips. What if it’s poison? something inside of him asked. He answered aloud, “What the hell, I’m dead anyway.” Mac licked the liquid off his finger. Water. Plain old water. Crazy Mac leaped into the air and shouted for joy.

  “Crazy. The creature is crazy, oh glorious self.

  “Clumsy, too. What a disgusting turn of events!

  “But we must talk to it. We must fix the in/out sound thingie so the creature can hear us.

  “How? You don’t have arms anymore. I don’t have arms anymore. Without arms, neither of us have any fingers. And without fingers, how are we going to fix anything. Besides, you don’t know how to fix things, peon self.

  “I understand, exalted self. If I don’t have arms and fingers, then you don’t have arms and fingers. One plus one, in our case, is still only one, of course.

  Mac bent down and licked the puddle of water on the floor. He was so desperately thirsty, it did not matter that he looked like a dog. No one was there to see him. When he finished, he pulled the empty water skin from across his shoulder and rigged it against the framework so that the water dripped into the skin. He left the great strangeness of the room to go back to Toadstool for the other water skin. It would take a long time to fill both skins, but once done there was a chance, a slim chance, that he and Toadstool could get out of this alive.

  The old man started thinking beyond the moment. He had to get in touch with Jack and tell him about this crazy place. Was there a more direct route to Borderton? Would Jack still be in Borderton by the time he got there? Where should he go? What shou
ld he do?

  Chapter 19

  “What do you think, gentlemen?” Jonathan McGurke asked, a look of concern on his face. He had maneuvered Mayor Davis into a corner shortly after Jack and Sheffie and most of the others had left, purposely waiting until Alexandre Andropov was gone. McGurke, in fact, had taken it upon himself to remind Alexandre that the city required protection from Rhinos, a not so subtle hint that the head of the rangers needed to get back to work instead of hanging around at the tail end of a social affair. Alexandre took the hint with a smile. He had no desire to tarnish his still relatively new position as commander of the rangers by creating a scene with the most influential businessman in Lisbon, a man who, no doubt, held some of the strings that kept Alexandre in his position, if not all of them.

  Avery had been having a conversation with Mayor Davis and was still standing there when McGurke cornered them. McGurke had not indicated that the scientist should leave, so Avery stayed.

  “Seems like an intelligent fellow,” Avery said, realizing McGurke was asking about Jack Wheat. He felt he should try to be a part of the conversation.

  “There is an air of confidence about the man,” Mayor Davis said, “That seems to come from success and not from arrogance. I can see him facing a Rhino with no fear. And look at his record. He has done so many times. He might be able to help.”

  “Might, hell,” McGurke began. “He better be able to help after what I’m paying to keep him here. And with my business interests all over town, I’ve got plenty at risk if he fails.” He turned directly to Davis and stared into his eyes and said, “You understand I went along with your selection of Andropov against my better judgment. Then…”

  McGurke stopped in mid-sentence and stared at Avery as though seeing him for the first time. “Ah,” he said, “Avery, would you be so kind as to get me a glass of punch while Mayor Davis and I have a quick conversation? Politics, you understand.”