The interviewing officer was sympathetic, he too was a Gaian, an early convert who had also chosen family property as his Ground, and could appreciate what a blow it must be for Denny to lose his study area and be forced off the farm. Talking about the Hefn and their imperious ways, his face got very tight. He encouraged Denny to think about Hurt Hollow; they needed someone there and it would be good if the someone were a Gaian, who would appreciate the place’s historic significance.
A round-trip ticket to Pittsburgh was arranged. Denny, cleaned up, with a new haircut and his duffel full of clean clothes, boarded the boat and stood at the railing as it steamed upriver (passing legendary Hurt Hollow, which showed no sign of anyone being in residence), calling at Madison and Milton, Denny’s hometown, and finally at Carrollton, where the Kentucky River poured into the Ohio.
At Carrollton he left the boat, his scrawny, scruffy figure melting into the flow of disembarking passengers, and boarded a mule-hauled flatboat bound up the Kentucky for Frankfort and points south and east. He bought his ticket on board. It was dusk of the following day when he stepped off at the landing at Tyrone, under the railroad bridge that spanned the river from bluff to high bluff.
While waiting for full dark to fall, he converted his duffel into a backpack by adjusting some straps. It was good and bad that there was no Moon. In the blackness he slipped by side roads, now no more than tracks around the town of Lawrenceburg with its inconvenient street lights, and set off up the road he had traveled so many times on Rocinante’s back. He was heading for the cabin.
A mile west of Lawrenceburg he encountered a line of signposts, brand new, marching away from the road in both directions and forward along both margins. It was too dark to read the smaller print, but the word in large type at the top was Warning! He didn’t need to read the rest, or wonder who had posted the warnings. By continuing along the road he was, in effect, entering a narrow corridor through a forbidden zone. Denny shrugged, made a face, and forged ahead.
That he knew the road from horseback as well as he did was a lucky thing; the night was very dark, with a mean headwind, and the damaged black surface was hard to see. He found a stick to probe with and felt his way along the edge, cursing the need to go so slowly.
At four in the morning Denny reached the bridge over the intermittent stream he called Part-Time Creek, which established the eastern boundary of the old farm, and probed his way in total blackness down into the bed of the creek. Its jumble of rocks was dry – no water or ice in the bed to make things worse – but inching upstream in the dark without falling was so close to impossible that more than an hour had passed before Denny felt he was far enough from the road to risk pushing up through a tangle of brush to flat land.
But he came out where he had intended to, behind the skeletal tobacco barn where the Scout camp’s maintenance equipment had been kept. Tobacco barns were built with spaces between the vertical boards, so the circulating air could cure the tobacco leaves hung in bunches from the rafters. The barn was therefore poor protection from the wind, and also listing badly. But Denny had stored Rocinante’s and Roscoe’s hay in the loft, and had nailed the saggy ladder tight to the uprights. He had gambled that the Hefn hadn’t found and salvaged that hay, and the gamble paid off. Working by memory and feel, avoiding the weak spots in the floor of the loft, he built a windbreak out of bales. He cut the twine from another bale to make a mattress, scratchy but fragrant, of loose hay (carefully rolling up the cut pieces of twine and stuffing them in his pants pocket), then piled more hay over himself and his stuff and pulled his watch cap down over his ears and his parka hood up over that. By first light he was sound asleep.
Nothing woke him; he woke himself, startled awake from a dream of crossing an endlessly broad, jaggedly tumbled polar ice floe in Arctic blackness. He was feeling his way with something like an ice axe lashed to the end of a ski pole, thinking This would make a good weapon if a polar bear comes along, when just then a polar bear did loom dazzlingly out of the darkness. But after a first thrill of fear, Denny realized that the bear was smiling and nodding in a benevolent way. “Want a lift?” it said. There was a fuzzy white cub on its back already, sitting up like a human child on a pony. “Sure,” said Denny, and he scrambled up on the bear’s back behind the cub. But then the bear began to gallop across the rough ice. There was nothing to hold onto except the cub, and Denny understood that he absolutely must not take the cub down with him. As he was jolted off its mother’s slippery back, he woke himself up yelling.
Fine, why not just go out and blow a trumpet blast to let everybody know where he was? Fully awake and instantly aware of his situation, Denny swore silently as he pushed back the parka hood and watch cap, straining to hear anything that would suggest he’d given himself away. But there was nothing, no sound at all, not even wind keening through the cracks between the slats. It was perfectly still. Nor could he see any signs of advancing, vengeful Hefn through those cracks. The day was overcast, chilly but not terribly cold. He looked at his watch: 3:46. It wouldn’t be dark enough to leave the barn for a couple more hours at least. After squirming around in the hay to try to go back to sleep, which proved impossible, he sat up cautiously and peered around.
The inside of the barn appeared exactly as he had last seen it. That probably meant that the Hefn had taken it for the derelict it was; probably they hadn’t even opened the doors facing the road, which were stuck tight anyway, to peer inside. Roscoe’s tracks were around if you looked, but he and Rocinante had been stabled in the little shed near the cabin that housed the cistern and in former times the pump.
Denny passed the remaining hours of daylight eating a sandwich and a packet of craisins, checking his watch every couple of minutes, and going over and over the reasons why he wasn’t going to be caught in the loft like a cornered rat. He knew the penalty for disobeying a direct order from the Hefn. He knew what those signs said besides Warning! They said that persons caught willfully trespassing on posted land would have their memories erased. This was no idle threat, it happened every so often when frustration about the Baby Ban built up enough somewhere on the planet that people had to fight back, despite the failure and horrible punishment of everybody who had ever tried that – as far as Denny knew, every rebellion had failed completely.
Wiped transgressors were always displayed on international viddy. Denny had seen the bewildered, pitiful products of Hefn mindwipe on the screen and been horrified, like everyone else. He had never expected to risk that sort of treatment for himself – worse than execution in a way – and not until now had he understood why people were sometimes driven, despite the utter pointlessness of defying the Hefn, to defy them anyway.
When Denny had had plenty of time to drive himself bonkers, the light finally began to fade, and then it was twilight, and then full dark. He made himself wait until six, and then with a sneeze of relief threw off the covering of hay. He emptied the duffelpack, piling his things at the top of the ladder, and put the pack on. Outside the barn he spent a couple of minutes brushing himself off and picking hay seeds and scratchy stalks out of his hair and collar.
His next move was to approach the cabin from the rear, to find out whether any Hefn were actually in residence. Hefn could see extremely well at night, and Humphrey had gone off scouting on his own without getting lost, that day he had thrown Denny off the farm. But Denny still felt confident that here in the open on his own Ground he enjoyed a certain advantage.
A wagon road ran alongside Part-Time Creek up the hollow; he followed it cautiously for a little while, then struck left, straight uphill, scrambling, pulling himself along using saplings or going on all fours. He startled a little group of white-tailed deer bedded down on the hillside and heard them bound away, making a lot of noise in the dry leaves. They could see what they were doing. He was making a lot of noise himself, but there was no help for it, he couldn’t see a thing. But he wasn’t lost; all he had to do to get where he was going was keep heading straight uphi
ll. When he felt he was far enough from the barn not to leave a sign for the once-predatory Hefn, he paused to pee into a tangle of blackberry canes.
After a while, puffing and sweating, he came to the edge of the woods and stopped to catch his breath. The hillside sloped more gently here. Directly ahead he could see the glint of the septic lagoon, and above that the pond; and beyond the pond the cabin stood beneath bare trees on top of the ridge. Because he knew where to look, Denny could see its faint outline, blacker than the night sky. The place had a deserted feel to it; now that he had it in view, he was ready to bet that nobody, Hefn or human, waking or sleeping, was inside. There was also no helicopter parked on the site of the former garden. Breathing more easily, but still being careful, Denny climbed to the ridge, hugging the tree line. Where the driveway dipped out of sight of the cabin, he ducked across and slipped into the stable: empty. They had left the hay behind, but the horse and the mule had been evacuated.
His plan called for stealing a sleeping bag and tent from the stash in the basement – on this sortie or, if obstacles developed, a later one. There seemed no reason to wait. The lock on the patio door had rusted out long ago, so he didn’t have to break in. He rummaged in the storm shelter with utmost stealth, but it felt more like a game of cops and robbers than anything truly dangerous. The cabin was empty; intuitively he was certain of this. Maybe it would stand empty for years now, while the land around it went completely wild. Maybe the Hefn had such complete confidence in the deterrent power of their warning signs that they weren’t going to bother checking to be sure everybody was in compliance. Maybe this was going to be easier than he had expected.
But that didn’t allow for sloppiness. He knew it would take all his skill in camping and woodcraft to leave no trace of his presence for an overflying chopper to detect.
He found what he needed by feel. Besides the sleeping bag, pad, and tent, he took some cooking gear, a mess kit, a canteen, and a jerry can. That was all. He left everything else exactly as he’d found it, trusting that a Hefn casting a casual eye around the basement would never notice that some of this castoff junk had disappeared. The aluminum cookware had canvas covers and didn’t clank. He packed it all in the duffel and slipped out, closing the patio door with elaborate care, despite his perfect certainty that nobody was at home in what had used to be his home.
Denny set up camp directly across the main road from the tobacco barn, on the north bank of Indian Creek. Working fast by pale dawn light, he pitched the pup tent in a small clearing ringed by the unkempt-looking red cedar trees that popped up in any patch of open ground hereabouts. From the road he would be invisible.
Maybe not from the air, however. He recklessly spent a hour of early daylight cutting cedar boughs and tying them to a makeshift exterior ridge pole with pieces of twine from the cut bales of hay, until the tent had a camouflage roof of cedar thatching. None of this could be accomplished in perfect silence, but he did his best.
Finally he crawled into the tent, inflated the pad, unzipped the sleeping bag, removed his boots and parka, and called it a day. Or a night. I’d better get used to the nocturnal life, he told himself. Moving around much in the daytime will be too risky. If we get snow cover I won’t be able to move around at all. Fire’s going to be a problem . . . Listing these obstacles, he wasn’t sure how long he would be able to stick to his plan. But any more time at all with the bears was better than none, if he didn’t get caught.
Night and day are about the same to a hibernating bear. The calculated risk he was running seemed very much worth it to Denny the next nightfall, as he stood outside Rosetta’s den, pulling on the leather gauntlets he had managed to sneak into his duffel – along with the other contents of his daypack, the scales and flashlight and PocketPad – almost under Humphrey’s nose, while he was being extradited. This day, the third since his arrival at the farm, had been cold, around twenty degrees F. He’d huddled in his cocoon of down in the afternoon and thought out what he meant to do, then cut straight up from the road to the ridge top through deep woods as night was falling, and now he stood in the leaves tingling with exhilaration. He was here, despite everything that had been done to try to stop him. He would see the cubs again, weigh them, record the weights. Having no way to keep blood samples frozen till he could get them to a lab, he wasn’t going to draw any blood. But he would keep the other records as best he could, carry on the research a while longer. He felt he owed it to himself, and to the bears, and to humanity in general. As much as anything, this was an act of secret defiance against the Hefn.
Swelled with a sense of purpose, he fished out the flashlight, flopped on his belly, and crawled into the den. Aiming low, he switched on the light, the first light he had used to break the darkness for three days running. The rank heap of Rosetta lay on its side, casting a looming shadow on the wall of the den, head tucked down, enormous paws curled inward. The cubs were snuggled against her. Denny crawled forward on his forearms, wildlife biologist displacing radical insurgent, beside himself with eagerness to see the cubs, see how much they’d grown in more than two weeks.
His right hand had closed on the nape fur of the first cub, a bigger, fatter Rodeo, when the beam of the flashlight fell on the second cub. This wasn’t Rocket, he saw that at once. Rocket was gone. This cub was a little bigger than Rocket had been two weeks ago, but visibly smaller than Rodeo was right now, and more nearly black than cinnamon brown. How in the world had it gotten here? He released his grip on Rodeo and reached for the changeling.
Just as he was about to touch it, the cub shifted its hold on the nipple, screwing up its little face against the light. Denny’s hand jerked back as if snakebit while his brain did a slow cartwheel, trying to interpret what he was seeing by the flashlight’s weirdifying glare. This little animal wasn’t a bear cub at all. Its shape and color were wrong, its proportions were wrong . . . what was it? What could have happened? He squirmed closer and aimed the light directly at the cub’s head, trying to see its face. Again it screwed its eyes shut, and this time it let go of the nipple and made a thin sound of complaint. Its hairy little forelimbs, that had been rummaging in Rosetta breast fur, waved in the air, little arms ending in – in –
It felt like a crack of lightning. By straining every ounce of self-control Denny managed not to scream, not to flail his way out of the den. But he backed out a lot faster than he’d crawled in, shutting off the flashlight before emerging not from prudence but by habit alone. He took off down the ridge trail toward the cabin by habit also, fleeing in blind panic until, inevitably, he tripped on something and fell flat.
Lying where he’d fallen, he struggled to master his shock. The second cub was a baby Hefn. A baby Hefn! In a bear’s den! There had never been a baby Hefn anywhere on Earth before – but a bear’s den in the middle of winter! This was a mystery beyond all solving, but Denny had understood one thing the instant he laid eyes on the baby Hefn: his situation was no longer one of calculated risk but of imminent suicide. Probably no human in the world knew about this but himself. It wasn’t possible to imagine that the baby had been put into Rosetta’s den by anyone other than an adult Hefn, Humphrey or Innisfrey. The biologists had obviously been thrown out of this territory so the baby could be planted in the den.
Baby or babies? Only this den, or others as well, in other study areas? In other states? Countries? Denny shook his head to clear it, and stood up cautiously. It didn’t matter; what mattered was, he had to get out of here now or he would be the featured attraction at the next Hefn humiliation event on the viddy. No disobedience of Hefn law could result more obviously in mindwipe than this one of his. There was no doubt in his mind that he had blundered onto something top secret, and none that the Hefn would be back often to check on their little bundle of joy. He had to get away.
But also, he had to leave no trace of his having been there, and in his panic flight he had left the daypack behind. Okay retrieve the pack, then get down through the woods to the road as fast as po
ssible, break camp, ditch the camping gear someplace, hotfoot it back to Lawrenceburg, and catch the first boat back to Carrollton tomorrow. Thinking these things, he groped his way back to the den.
And then what? Denny stood staring at the great pale shape that was the gigantic fallen oak forming a lintel for the entrance to the den. A tree could grow that big on marginal farmland, he thought irrelevantly, for one reason only: it had stood on a fence line since it was a sapling.
Hop a boat to Carrollton, and then what? Agree to study the Hurt Hollow bears, keep his head down and his mouth shut? I should go back down there, he thought. It’s only been a couple of minutes and already I don’t believe it myself. If I’m going to break the story (was he going to break the story?) I have to know for sure that I saw what I think I saw.
If only I had a camera, he thought with regret. A holocamera, or a diskorder. Might as well wish for the Moon. But nobody’s going to believe this unless I have some kind of proof.
For a mad moment he considered kidnapping the baby Hefn, proof incontrovertible of what had happened here. But he didn’t, of course, know how to take care of it, and if one hair of the baby’s bearded little chinny-chin-chin should accidentally be hurt . . . and anyway, consequences aside, this baby was, in one sense, Rosetta’s suckling cub and Rodeo’s foster sibling. He didn’t want it on his conscience if somehow he (he?) got hurt.
More than anything in the world, Denny did not want to go back down into Rosetta’s den, but he did it anyway. There was no mistake. The baby had tiny, forked, four-fingered hands, two digits opposed to the other two. It was hairy all over. It had whiskers. It was much darker than the adult Hefn, all of whom were varying shades of gray, but there could be no doubt that this was the infant form of the same kind of creature.
Having made certain of this, Denny wriggled back out into the night with only one urgent need on his mind. This time he remembered the pack, and remembered to head in the right direction, straight toward his campsite on the creek, a long up-and-down – mostly down – scramble in the dark. Interestingly enough, he was getting much better at seeing and moving about in the dark.
The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17 Page 32
