The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17

by Gardner Dozois

  He broke camp, stuffed all his gear into the duffel, and started, relatively sure-footedly, back down the road toward town. Having done this much, his mind began to hum and click; and after a while he had a sort of plan.

  Denny had been to Hurt Hollow lots of times, as a little school kid when Jesse Kellum was still the caretaker and keeper of the (metaphorical) flame, and afterward, when it had been closed to the public, as a Gaian initiate. He knew all about Orrin and Hannah Hubbell, the legendary couple who had built the house and kept goats and bees there, and written about their life “on the fringe of society.” They were classic proto-Gaians. While Jesse Kellum was caretaker, Pam Pruitt had been a girl living across the river in Indiana. She’d spent a lot of time here in her teens, helping Jesse, even after the Hefn Humphrey had chosen her to be one of the first group of math-prodigy Apprentices to be trained by Humphrey in how to operate the Time Transceivers that could open a window into the past.

  Denny also knew that Pruitt had lost her math intuition and no longer worked at the Bureau of Temporal Physics, though she continued to work with and for the Bureau. She had remained close to Humphrey, and had become prominent in the Gaian movement after leaving the Bureau’s Santa Barbara headquarters. Nowadays she was something or other to do with the Mormon Church, and ordinarily lived in Salt Lake City.

  The reason he knew so much about Pam Pruitt was partly that she was a local celeb, the only Apprentice ever with close ties to Kentucky, and partly because she had been associated with Hurt Hollow in his mind as long as he could remember. The Hollow was important to all Gaians, but the place had been Pam Pruitt’s personal Ground before it ever became a shrine. She was part of Gaian lore in Kentucky, and especially in Denny’s hometown of Milton, directly across the river from Madison, Indiana, five miles from the Scofield College campus where Pruitt had lived as a child. Though he’d never met her, he’d grown up knowing all about her.

  Humphrey had said she was in residence now, probably on a personal retreat and not happy about being burst in upon. He wasn’t one hundred per cent certain that she wouldn’t betray him to Humphrey, but he thought not. And she had a lot of influence with the Hefn. If he was going to tell anybody, he could think of no better person to dump his problem on.

  Denny boarded a southbound steamboat in Carrollton and got off at Milton with half a dozen other people. He could have asked the pilot to let him off at the Hurt Hollow landing, but it wasn’t a regular stop and he was afraid somebody might remember. Anyhow, from Milton you could walk to Hurt Hollow the back way, straight up the river bluff, along the bluff top by a maze of little roads, and down to the river again. The roads were bad here too, but at least he didn’t feel obliged to hike all that way in the dark.

  An electrified fence enclosed the whole sixty-one-acre tract of the Hollow from road to river. By the time he reached the upper gate it was late afternoon, and he was tired. He groaned at the prospect of bushwhacking all around the periphery of the property while the sky got darker and darker, but saw no alternative; the house was close to the river bank, a mile or so below the upper gate. From the top there was no way to signal the house. Pruitt wouldn’t hear him if he yelled, and somebody else very well might.

  He’d bought two sandwiches and an apple in Carrollton; he ate these now, sitting with his back against the gate, and drank some water from the Girl Scout canteen in its red and green plaid cover. The rest of the camping gear had been cached under the Salt River bridge, halfway between the farm and Lawrenceburg, but he’d kept the canteen with its useful built-in biofilter.

  He thought of tossing his duffelpack over the fence, so as not to have to lug it along. But if Pruitt had left the Hollow by now, and Denny couldn’t get in, he would need the stuff in the duffel. So in the end he started on what he hoped was the shorter way round the fence line with his burden still strapped to his aching shoulders.

  It took him more than an hour to get down to the river, even traveling almost all downhill, and to work his way to the dock, but when he got there he saw the phone still mounted next to the lower gate. Thank God. Denny remembered how, on school trips, the teacher would pick up that very phone and a buzzer would sound faintly in the house, and Jesse Kellum would come down and unlock the gate. Now, if only the thing was in working order. How would he get Pruitt’s attention tonight if it wasn’t? His tired brain had nothing to suggest.

  At least she was still there. Denny could see an oil lamp shining in the window and a lit lantern on the patio outside, and he smelled wood smoke. He could also hear a dog barking. He dropped his pack on the dock, opened the little door, and took the receiver off the hook. The line sounded dead to him, but inside the house a shadow moved, then there was a click, and a woman’s voice said “Yes?” into his ear, and then “Feste, be quiet.”

  Denny realized he hadn’t thought out what he wanted to say. “Are you Pam Pruitt?” he inquired in a croaky voice – how long since he had actually talked to anybody? – and when she didn’t answer he cleared his throat and rushed ahead. “My name’s Denny Demaree, I’m a wildlife biologist, I’ve been studying black bears in Anderson County, the Hefn recovery program? I’m a Gaian, the farm where I’ve been working is my Ground. Something’s happened. Could I speak with you?”

  There was silence. Then the voice said, “This is Pam Pruitt. What do you mean, something’s happened?”

  “I, uh, can’t tell you about it like this, I need to talk to you in person.”

  “Look, I’m on a retreat.”

  “I know, I’m really sorry, but this is – this can’t wait. This is huge,” Denny said. “Please.”

  “You knew I was making a retreat?”

  “Not exactly, but the Hefn Humphrey told me you were here and I guessed it might be a retreat. I’m really sorry,” he said again.

  Another silence, then a sigh. “Okay. You’re on the dock? I can come down for a couple of minutes.”

  Relieved, Denny tucked the phone away. He saw the door open and the lantern begin to wobble down the path toward him; by now it had become completely dark. Long before Pruitt reached the gate, her dog – so black Denny could see nothing but teeth and eyeshine – had rushed up and was growling through the woven wire. When she caught up with him, her first words were “Push up close against the fence and spread your arms and legs. Feste, check ’em out. Good boy, check ’em out.” Denny did as he was told, feeling foolish, while the dog sniffed him industriously all over through the fence. “Now turn around and do it again . . . okay. Leave the bag where it is. Feste, on guard,” and he heard the gate click.

  Denny stepped inside, and was suddenly conscious of his appearance, which the cold-water tap in the packet’s washroom had done little to improve. “Sorry I’m so grubby. I’ve been camping and didn’t get a chance to clean up.”

  Pruitt held the lantern up to get a better look at him. “Camping where, in a coal mine?” But she grinned as she said it.

  “On the farm where my study was being done. Humphrey terminated the project and threw me off the place, uh, around two or three weeks ago now I think it was, I’ve kind of lost track.”

  Pruitt’s eyebrows shot up. “He threw you out and you snuck back in? Have you got a death wish? You could get yourself wiped for that.”

  “Like I don’t know that! The study wasn’t finished,” Denny said defensively, “but anyway, what he said was that East Central should be left to recover on its own now, but I don’t think that is why he kicked me out. Something else is going on.”

  Pruitt slowly lowered the lantern. “Like what?”

  “You’re not going to believe me,” Denny said desperately, “I can’t prove it to you, but last night, see, last night I went into a den to check on the cubs, I hadn’t seen them since the day I got sent packing, I had a flashlight, and right away I realized that one of them was gone, and – ”

  “Oh-kay,” Pruitt said, interrupting him. “You better come on up to the house then. Get your stuff and close the gate – slam
it good and hard. Feste, school’s out. Good job.”

  Denny stared at her, feeling chilled. “You know about it. You knew what I was going to say.” He backed away, slipped through the gate and shut it between them with a clang. “You’re tight with Humphrey – ”

  “It happens,” said Pruitt mildly, “that Humphrey and I don’t see eye to eye on the subject of – what you were about to tell me. It’s your call, but you’re in big trouble right now, so unless you’ve got someplace else to go, I’d come along quietly if I were you.”

  Denny sagged against the gate. The only other place he had to go, now that he knew what he knew, was back to work for Fish and Wildlife, which was itching to assign him to study bears right here in Hurt Hollow, only now he didn’t even have that option if Pruitt exposed him to the Hefn. “How do I know you won’t turn me over to them?”

  She had started toward the house, but turned back to face him. “I guess you’ll have to trust me on that, which I realize you have no reason to do, except that Gaians don’t lie to each other, do they? And I give you my word that I won’t.”

  Denny trudged behind her up the path to the house, dragging his duffel, stumbling with exhaustion. Pruitt set the lantern down and opened the door onto a warm wooden room with a bright fire on the hearth. The dog slipped through ahead of them both. “I expect you’ve been here before.”

  “Yeah. Never at night, though.” By the firelight he got his first good look at Feste, who was now sniffing his hand, and let out a snort of laughter. “A poodle? Your guard dog is a poodle?”

  “Hey, poodles can be great guard dogs, they just don’t usually look the part. With his hair cut like that, most people don’t even know he’s a poodle.” The dog, jet-black, was clipped short all over and resembled a Saluki with tight curls.

  “Our neighbors had a standard when I was a kid. I remember that long nose.” He rubbed the dog’s head and stifled a yawn.

  Pruitt gave him a scrutinizing once-over. “You’re completely done in. Why not get some sleep before we talk?” And at his skeptical look, “Far as I know, nobody knows about your little escapade yet, unless you’ve told somebody besides me. You can afford a few hours of sleep; you may get found out, but not by tomorrow morning.”

  “Why,” asked Denny, “are you helping me? Are you helping me?”

  “We’ll see,” said Pruitt. “First things first.”

  “Who else knows?” Denny asked this question while tucking into a bowl of goat stew. He had slept for eleven hours, then made excellent use of a bucket of hot water, a bar of soap, and Jesse Kellum’s straight razor. Now he sat at the Hubbles’ long, heavy table of dark wood, dressed in his last pieces of clean laundry from Louisville: a ratty pair of orange corduroys and a shapeless cotton sweatshirt with both elbows out.

  “Search me. Maybe nobody. I know because . . . well, Humphrey would have a hard time deceiving me about anything, let alone anything this critical, even though he knew it would throw me into a quandary. I’m not sure he appreciates how much of one it does throw me into.”

  Eating steadily, Denny kept his focus. “So what are they up to?”

  Pruitt propped her boots on the hearth, laced her fingers behind her head, and sighed heavily. She was a lean, severe-looking, rather mannish woman of forty or so, short brown hair mixed with gray. Denny thought her more attractive in person than in the holos and viddies he’d seen, not that that was saying a lot, but he no longer felt apprehensive about whether he could trust her; she was straightforward to the point of bluntness. “I’ve been trying to figure out how much to tell you. It would have been a lot better for you – for me too, come to that – if you hadn’t been so pigheaded and intrepid about the damn bears. The reason I’m making this retreat right now is to try to get clear about how to handle what I know. Now I have to get clear about how to handle what you know, with no good answers coming through on either front so far.”

  Impatient with this dithering, Denny cut straight to the point. “Who put the baby Hefn in Rosetta’s den?”

  “I can tell you that. Humphrey did. It’s not his baby, but he did the placement.”

  Alarmed, he demanded, “Did they tranquilize the mother?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Probably.”

  “Goddammit!” And then, “What did they do with Rocket? The other cub.”

  “I don’t know that either. Gave him to a rehab outfit to raise as an orphan, most likely.”

  “That sucks.” Furious, Denny pounded his fist on the table, rattling the spoon in his empty bowl. “Why’d they do that? Switch Rocket with the Hefn baby?”

  “Why.” Pruitt grimaced. “Sure you want to know? You’ll be in even deeper.”

  “If they’re messing with my bears, yes I want to know! Anyway, how can I get in any deeper than I’m in already?”

  “Okay, then. I only just heard about this myself a month or so ago. It turns out,” she said, “that the Hefn haven’t been repairing the damage we did to the Earth entirely out of an altruistic desire to heal Earth’s biosphere. It turns out that the Hefn and the Gafr – ” she glanced at him, looked away. “It’s like this. The Hefn and the Gafr aren’t just connected in that master-servant sense we know about. They’re also sexually symbiotic.”

  Denny’s jaw dropped. “Symbiotic? Really?”

  “Really. Genetically they’re not even closely related, but neither can breed without the other. All the Hefn are male. All the Gafr are female. Everybody aboard that ship is, or was, part of a mated pair. The ship was looking for a place that was natural and unspoiled enough for them to breed in, because their home world, for some reason that hasn’t been explained to me, is no longer a suitable place to do that in.”

  “They were looking for a place to breed when they found Earth?”

  “Right.”

  “Four hundred years ago?”

  “Right.”

  “And they marooned the renegade Hefn here intending to come right back for them – and stay, and start reproducing! Only they had mechanical problems, and by the time they got back in 2006, Earth was no longer natural and unspoiled enough?”

  “Right three times.”

  “Now we come to it.” He shoved the bowl away and folded his arms on the table. “Why do they have to breed in the Garden of Eden?”

  “I gather,” Pruitt said slowly, “that the postnatal development of Hefn infants depends on spending a certain amount of time, at a certain stage, being raised in the wild by a predator. As a predator. By 2006 we no longer had a viable supply of nursemaid predatory species, and, not incidentally, we had way too many people.”

  “Oh my God.” Denny, all biologist for the moment, looked thunderstruck. “That’s fascinating. That’s absolutely fascinating.” He thought a minute. “Chimps? The big cats?”

  Pruitt got up and cleared away his cup and bowl. She brought a basket of wrinkled-looking yellow apples to the table and thumped it down on the floor. “The big cats are all still pretty endangered in the wild, except for lions and cougars, and anyway the Hefn don’t really relate to cats that well.” She half-filled a bucket with water, brought that to the table too, and started transferring the apples to the bucket, where they bobbed peacefully. “Chimps might have been a possibility – there’s a documented account that a group of them once adopted an abandoned Nigerian boy – but the Hefn needed to work with populations that could recover faster. Shorter gestation period, multiple births, briefer childhood, faster bounceback.” She snorted. “I used to wonder why Humphrey was so interested in our myths and stories about feral children. When the Apprentices were kids in DC, he used to like to talk about that. Tarzan was a big thing of mine back then.”

  “Wolves!” Denny said. “Romulus and Remus. Mowgli. Those two girls in India. My God – the coyote field studies!”

  Pruitt had removed the empty basket and fetched large bowls and paring knives and a section of newspaper, and now she sat down, spreading paper in front of her like a place mat. She nodded. “Yeah. They
ruled out every species that hadn’t been able to adapt to some degree to massive loss of habitat. Like tigers and chimps, wolves are too specialized. Coming back nicely now, of course . . . but coyotes were never in any danger of being exterminated, no matter how intensively they were hunted, trapped, poisoned – well, you know all this better than I do. The Hefn were very interested in the eastern coyotes, the big ones, for a while, but in the end they decided that black bears were a better answer.” While she talked, Pruitt had been taking apples from the bucket, quartering and coring them on the newspaper, and tossing the pieces into one bowl and the cores and excised bad bits into another.

  Denny drew a sheet of newspaper in front of himself and picked up a paring knife. “Bears aren’t very good predators, though. They’re fast, but not agile enough to prey on mature elk or deer, and as for rabbits and mice and like that, forget it.” He reached into the bucket for an apple.

  “In fact, not being specialized has worked to their advantage, and anyway they’re apparently predatory enough for the purpose. And also,” pitching a double handful of pieces into the bowl, “there’s an authenticated account of a bear in Iran that carried off a toddler and nursed him for three days. Cross-species adoption, see, like the chimps and the Nigerian kid. Besides which, bears do exhibit one excellent behavior, if you’re a Hefn.”

  Denny slapped the table. “They hibernate!”

  “They hibernate. The only large mammalian predator that does, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Oh man. You’re saying – ” Denny stared at Pruitt. “The Baby Ban. The Gaian Mission. All the habitat recovery projects. Think of everything the Gaians and the other eco-freaks have put up with, and supported, because we thought they were doing it to save the Earth – Gaia – and ultimately life on Earth, including human life. And all the time they were really doing it for themselves! This changes everything!”