Analog Science Fiction and Fact 12/01/10

by Dell Magazines

  At the end, Jove came and stood silently beside me. “Good job, Chaunce. Now we can make our own nails.”

  “That’s what we did all this work for? Nails?”

  “And hinges. And maybe bits for those animals down below.” He nodded at the roof. “One of your beasts might have pulled that easier.”

  It wasn’t a use I had thought of—I’d been thinking of riding them. I felt doubtful they’d be pullers. But if they were—we could make wagons and flatbeds and farm tools. The thought was good. “Can I have some rope?”

  “You might get hurt. Or die. The boys might die.”

  “We’ve gotta find accord with some of the wild things here. We can’t fear them all forever.” But then, he’d lost a wife to a pack of demons, found her in pieces three days after we landed. Years had passed, but some memories burn your soul.

  He toed the ground for a while.

  I could get enough of the council to override him if I really tried. But he was a good leader, and I’d learned that if you undermine a good leader you can be rewarded with a worse one.

  He swallowed and looked off at some distant spot in the sky before he said, “Let’s go get it.”

  I had plenty of time to think, lurching home in the darkening night with three hundred feet of rope coiled over my right shoulder. I understood Jove’s issue: Time breathed down on us. We were failing, dying by bits each year as we missed goals, became food for the local predators, fought amongst each other, and tried ever so hard to learn the dangers and opportunities here. We needed more stout, warm buildings, to retrieve the rest of our supplies from Traveler before the shuttles ran out of fuel, to build better perimeters, and to breed more children than Fremont took from us. Taking the three boys out on the plains represented a hefty risk of our future. Better to risk boys than girls, but still ...

  When I dropped my load of rope on the ground outside the house, the three of them tumbled out right away, faces full of excitement. They’d been planning. Sho came up to me and said, “We can’t get that over their heads. We can’t get it around their legs or we might break them.”

  I considered. I’d been thinking of horses. But we were not cowboys. I’d never tried to catch a wild animal in my life. Ran from a few here. The animals on my farms had been born in warm stables and grown up unafraid of me. This was a puzzle. “We can’t cut the rope too short or we’ll never be able to use it for anything else.”

  So we made walls on two sides, using the cliff as the third.

  We lost a whole day hiking to the Lace Forest and finding four big logs, dragging them back, and posting them upright into the ground. About the time we finished that, the work crews had broken for the day. They helped us string and tie the rope walls, the lowest rope at hebra-knee height, which was about our waists, and the highest something I could barely touch with my hands.

  When we finished, the dark brown rope stood out against the pale green grasses of late autumn. The corral did not look like it would work for much of anything. Besides, I wasn’t at all sure how we were going to get them anywhere near it.

  Now we had to do what Jove was afraid of. We had to walk through the tall grass and get the hebras to walk away from us and into the makeshift corral. Maybe we shouldn’t have done this—maybe we should have tried to get close without rope. Maybe we should have tried to find them in the winter woods. At any rate, it no longer mattered what we should have done. The shadow of night was knifing across the plains, and it was time to beat it up the cliff and bed down.

  I slept fine, but before first light all three boys came to my room. Derk, the biggest, rested his arms on Niko’s and Sho’s shoulders. “Sho was dreaming of hebras, and when he came to wake me up, I was dreaming about them too.”

  Sho nodded. “We dreamed they got caught in the walls we made and the dogs got them, rising up over their back legs and standing on their backs.” He stopped, his eyes wide. He might cry if I let him keep worrying, and then he’d lose face and maybe be the next one to end up with a broken leg.

  “And biting their necks.” Niko added, not helping.

  “Did you dream too?” I asked Niko.

  He shook his head. “No. But I’m worried about the hebras.”

  “Well, I’m glad you care. That should make it easier to catch them.”

  “Really?” Sho asked.

  “Yes,” I assured them all. Might as well believe in success. It couldn’t hurt.

  “Can we sit in here with you?” Niko asked.

  So I let them stay. In ten minutes they had fallen asleep all over the bed like a litter of puppies, and I got up to watch for the light and pack us all a good lunch. The apple trees had come in well this fall, and Jove’s new wife, Maria, made excellent goat’s-milk cheese. We’d be set if we added a bit of fresh bread from the communal kitchen. Even though the morning shadows were still black ghosts, the first loaves should already be out. I shrugged into my coat and opened the door.

  I nearly jumped as a shadow moved nearby. Jove. Wordlessly, he held out three loaves of bread.

  “I don’t need that many.”

  “Yes, you do. I gave everyone on your shift the day off.”

  I raised my eyebrows and spoke more boldly than I ever had to him. “Big risk for you.”

  Although I really only still had moonlight to see by, I swear his cheeks reddened. “I had trouble sleeping. I kept doing math in my head. Doing just what we’re doing, if we keep dying so fast, there won’t be anything left of us in two hundred years.” He looked directly at me for the first time in a few days. “I remember what you said when you brought your ideas to us. Last year. We have to risk.”

  I could barely imagine what that cost him. People followed him because they were afraid. Like him. And now he was being brave. This would change us, and only success would change us for the better. The stakes had just risen.

  Together, Jove and I made up sandwiches for thirty people. My shiftmates started gathering outside, stamping against the morning cold, dressed in layers against the heat that would follow by midday. They chattered amongst themselves, a few nervous, a few excited. Laughter broke out over and over.

  The boys didn’t want anything more than excitement for breakfast, but I got them each to take a bread heel down in their coat pockets against the hunger that would threaten them as soon as we stopped and waited. At first I worried that Jove would try to take over, although in truth, neither he nor I knew much of anything about hunting hebras.

  He didn’t take charge. He stood to the side, curious and watchful and very silent. People looked to him at first, and then when he looked to me, they did too. A relief and a worry.

  We handed out stunners to all of the adults, two to the good shots. Half of our total stock, a firepower that scared even me. The stunners quieted everyone a bit. One shot would stop a human, two a demon, three a paw cat.

  The hebra herd watched us come down, and of course, we watched them.

  I expected them to think it was like any other morning, since we always came down at dawn to watch. But they scattered before we were even halfway down. Maybe because we started later than usual. Maybe just something in the way we walked, like we had a purpose instead of a simple curiosity.

  Jove spoke what I was thinking. “Maybe they don’t want us any more than the rest of this cursed planet wants us.”

  There were twenty-five of us total. I broke us into groups and sent four groups of five off. I thought about keeping Jove with us, but since I was keeping all three boys I decided I needed a shooter I could count on, and so I sent Jove off with the group that I figured would be safest. So that’s how me, the three boys, and my second in command from the smelter project, Campbell, all went over to stand downwind of the rope corral.

  The boys ate their bread. Campbell and I watched, keeping companionable silence. The boys fidgeted. Campbell and I made them stretch in the grass, crawling and parting the fronds, reminding them to close their eyes and mouths as they moved through it, like swimmers.
We sent them one by one up onto a small pile of rocks to look around the plain and see if they spotted the hebras (or anything else). They got bored and hungry and finished their bread heels and drank half the whole day’s water supply. Derk got bit by something nasty and flying and a welt came up on his arm. He didn’t complain, though. Good kid. It warmed and we stripped off our outer layer of coats.

  The first group came in, including Jove. He shook his head at me. “Nothing.”

  The second and third groups found each other and came in together, then the fourth. No one reported seeing anything bigger than a jumping-prickle or a long-tailed rat. We made a long string of humans and sandwiches at the base of the cliff, still downwind from the ropes. We rested on warm rocks. The three boys abandoned me and Jove. I figured they’d be watched well enough between so many of us. Besides, they too had seen cats bring down a baby hebra this spring. Surely they’d be cautious.

  “Did you see anything interesting out there?” I asked Jove.

  “Grass.”

  Well, true enough. His right cheek showed a set of thin lines where he’d seen the grass too closely, and one had been deep enough that it was slightly crusted with blood.

  “You should clean up before that starts itching.” I dug an antiseptic cloth out of my bag, adding a bit of water from my canteen to bring it to life. Some plants here were the antidotes to other plants, and we had a whole team of botanists doing nothing more than cataloging everything we learned. This was one of their gifts. Jove took the cloth, and while he wiped up his cheek and a deeper cut I hadn’t noticed on his forearm, I said, “They know we’re here. They’ve been grazing here every day for two years except winters and today—maybe they’re territorial and this is the territory for this herd. They’ve been watching us watch them, but they don’t like us all the way down here.”

  “What next?” he asked.

  We still had half of this day. “Let’s try again today, send everyone in one group except me and Campbell and the boys. Have you all go together along the road so you get farther away, and then make two teams and go forward. Maybe you can get far enough out for the hebras to be between you and me. Just don’t spook them. Sometimes they sleep during the day, but they’ll have watchers.”

  He handed me back the cloth instead of just putting it in his own pocket.

  I took it.

  “How do you know what they do during the day? You’re always working.”

  “I ask around the fire at night. Almost no one sees them during the day. One theory suggests they go into the woods, another that they sleep when the big predators sleep. I kinda like—”

  A scream cut my sentence off. One of the boys. “Demons!”

  No! They slept during the day. I knew that. Everybody knew that. Dammit—what did I know? I leapt up, dropping the rest of my lunch, and scrambled to a higher rock behind me. Our line—stretched out maybe twenty meters—did the same, people backing up against the cliff.

  “To me,” I called. The demons would try and surround the ends first, to isolate a single person or two and then kill them easily. I tried to recall who was where, couldn’t remember. Lousy leading.

  A demon bayed as if answering me, the same call I’d heard from the cliff, shuddering. It was worse down here, and diffuse, like the wail came from all around, the grass and the plains themselves hunting us.

  I couldn’t tell where the demon was.

  The boys.

  Derk and Niko came running up to me, panting, standing one at each side of me, looking out. They trembled, but neither cried.

  “Where’s Sho?” I demanded, voice high and worried.

  Another bay, and a yip. People gathered around us.

  Derk found his breath. “Up. On the cliff.”

  Indeed, over the chaos of gathering, drawing stunners, screeching for each other, demons yipping and baying, I heard the high slip of Sho’s voice.

  I looked up.

  He stood three meters above me, his feet dug into the cliff, apparently balanced on a ledge too small for me to see from below. He hung onto a tree growing thin and spindly out of dirt caught between rocks, leaning out. Close to falling. Now that I was looking at him, I could see he was screaming details. “Six of them. To the right.”

  I looked right. My head was above the grass, but barely. The stones we’d sat on made a small clearing, the grass close enough to throw shadows at our feet.

  Sho would see them coming for us, but we wouldn’t know until the grass parted in front of our faces.

  The demon cries were still a bit away, but confident. Maybe the demons didn’t care we were all together.

  “One almost there!” Sho cried. “By you, Chaunce.”

  I raised my stunner, hand shaking. I’d fired at a demon once, missed as it came right at me fast as lightning. Louise had been behind me and she hadn’t missed. Now the boys were behind me, small, no stunners.

  The dog burst through the grass, long and sinewy, teeth bared, eyes black and full of hunger.

  I fired.

  Someone else fired.

  The dog fell. Its coat rippled as another shot hit it.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “Don’t waste shots!”

  “There!” Sho.

  A second dog burst through in almost the same place, its body landing on the other one. This time we used four shots.

  Derk pushed past me, knife in hand, bent on killing the stunned animals.

  To my right, someone screamed, and in a moment of shock I heard the slick of another stunner and another thump. Who screamed?

  A hebra bugled, high and long. The same sound I’d heard a hundred times when this hunt played out below me and I merely watched.

  “Back!” Sho screamed. The watch hebra. That’s what Sho did for us.

  Sho and a real hebra. What was the hebra doing here?

  I backed.

  Derk ducked, his right hand now covered in demon blood.

  A head rose over mine, above the grass, the neck long and thin, a white beard like my grandfather’s last.

  I backed faster.

  The hebra passed between me and Derk in its lurching fast run, bigger than I expected, an animal the color of spring grass with gold spots on its knobby knees. It breathed deep and rattling but ran strong. A dog followed it, too fast for me to bring up my stunner.

  The woman next to me, Paulette, screamed in joy, clapping.

  “Watch!” Sho still sounded scared. “Stay back!”

  More hebras, the whole herd of them, and dogs, all running together. The dogs had given up on us. They moved away a bit, the hebras now silent except for deep, sharp breathing, the dogs yipping and baying on their heels.

  “Shoot the dogs!” I couldn’t tell who yelled, the command a shiver down my spine.

  Instinct told me. “No! The hebras can do this.”

  I stood as still as I could, the grass waving around me, the sounds of animals racing through it and the call and yips of hunter, hunted, and humans all distinct and all around.

  A high-pitched squeal touched my heart. A hebra. I heard its body fall, a sound like a sack of flour thrown from the roof of a storage barn. Me and Jove and Campbell raced toward the fallen hebra. A dog passed right in front of me, its tail slapping me sideways. I raised my stunner and hit its flank.

  It cried in pain, stopped, stood still, didn’t fall.

  I hit it again.

  It mewled, sounded like a child needing help, like it didn’t understand, and then it fell.

  Ahead of me, the fallen hebra struggled up, blood dripping down its leg from a slash in its thigh. Shaking. Not broken.

  Someone else dropped a dog to my right.

  Two other hebras raced past us, screaming.

  The few dogs left didn’t draw off this time. They circled the beast that had just gotten up. One of its knees bled too.

  There were four demons left. Few enough they should know better. Maybe the smell of blood drove them crazy.

  Someone I couldn’t see stunned an
other dog.

  A dog somewhere let out a high, sharp bark and in heartbeats the pack was gone. They might have never been there, the grass closed across the memory of their hungry mouths and long, powerful legs.

  The injured hebra took a step and then another. Gingerly.

  Two hebras walked through the grass, oblivious to us, and placed themselves on either side of the wounded one. One of the two strongest watch hebras came up to stand between me and the threesome, looking down at me. I stood there, craning my neck up, sweating, my ankle throbbing lightly from a sidestep I’d taken. Its shoulder rose above my eye, its front knee about at my chest. Its fur looked coarser than I’d expected.

  I kept my gun down.

  Even though its sides heaved, it looked at me as if speaking sentences. They had no language we could understand, but they were at least as smart as the herding dogs. And some days I thought the collies were smarter than me. I knew I was in the presence of something good, even on this hellhole of a planet.

  We would never capture such beasts in a rope corral. But they had allied themselves with us in that moment, voted with their thundering feet and high bugle calls. We would come to some kind of accommodation, some way to trade them safety for safety.

  These are the things that went through my head as I watched the beast watch me.

  The boys came up beside me and still the hebra watched, the plains silent now except for the ever-present buzz of insects. It took a long time before the hebras moved off, stately, visible above the waving dry grass for a long time.

  Copyright © 2010 Brenda Cooper

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