Mayson had seen it now. His face wore the bleak, let’s-get-it-over-with expression that I had begun to hate. He went over and picked up his gun.
“Put that down,” I said. “And for God’s sake keep still, or you’ll frighten it.”
He examined the mechanism of the safety catch. “We’ll have to take it back with us. It’ll be the scoop of the century.”
I planted myself between the gun and the tiger. “Look, Mayson, you can’t mean that. You couldn’t do it. And anyway, we’ve no equipment for taking it over the mountain dead or alive.”
“Not the carcass. Just the skin. We have knives. Think of the price it will fetch—the sensation!”
I dived for his gun. I was almost crying with rage and horror.
“You’re bloody well not going to kill it. It may be the last tiger in the world. What would be the use of it dead?”
He caught me in the midriff with the butt of the gun, and I fell heavily, gasping for breath.
“So what?” he said. “Who lost the camera, for that matter? And who do you think would ever believe we’d seen a tiger, without proof?” He began to push his way into the undergrowth, ignoring the thorns that tore his trousers and hands.
As a sociologist, Mayson should have known about the territorial instinct which mankind once shared with the rest of creation. I, as a biologist, certainly did. I had by now noticed that the tiger was a female, and pregnant. I knew that a breeding female was the most dangerous and unpredictable of all wild animals. Alarmed or provoked, that lovely, placid creature could change, in a moment, into a spitting tornado. Also, there was likely to be a male somewhere nearby. Mayson was in deadly danger. I collected my gun and followed him, plucking frantically at his shirt. “Come back, you damned fool! You’ll get yourself killed.”
The tigress, aroused by our noisy approach, now stood up, glaring at Mayson. Her ears lay flat, her back was arched, and a ferocious snarl distorted her beautiful face. Mayson had never fired a gun. The closeness of the range was no guarantee that he wouldn’t miss. It might even cause him to fire too late. I was equally inexperienced, but obviously I was about to learn fast.
Still oblivious to his danger, Mayson took aim. The tigress crouched, gathering herself for the spring. I had about two seconds. Either that glorious creature and her precious progeny were going to be destroyed for the sake of a bedraggled skin, inexpertly hacked from her warm body, or Mayson, my fellow human, was going to die a very sticky death.
There was no time for sentimentality. No civilized man could dare to take the risk. I raised my gun and fired, a split second before the tigress could leap, like a darting golden flame, at Mayson. There was a snarl, a flurry of limbs, and the sound of the gunshot sent every living thing diving for cover. I stood there, in the sinister, unnatural silence, and saw that I had not missed.
I left Mayson in the clearing we had made, with both the guns, the remainder of the food, and most of the kit I wanted never to see him again.
I’ll wrap this report in a plastic bag and leave it somewhere. But no one will come for it. Phillips is in no hurry to have us on his bunk roll again.
My second notebook is nearly full of drawings—of tiger cubs.
<
* * * *
TED THOMAS
THE WEATHER ON THE SUN
...the name “Weather Bureau” continued to be used, although the organization itself was somewhat changed in form. Thus the Weather Congress consisted of three arms. First was the political arm, the Weather Council. Second was the scientific arm, the Weather Advisors. Third was the operating arm, the Weather Bureau...
—The Columbia Encyclopedia, 32 Edition,
Columbia University Press
The mass of colors on the great globe shimmered and twisted in silence. The dials on the instruments along the curved walls dimmed and brightened each time the needles moved. The Weather Room presented an indecipherable complex of color to the untrained eye, but to the eyes of the Advisors who lounged there it presented an instantaneous picture of the world’s weather, when they bothered to look at it. The day shift was near its end, and the mathemeteorologists were waiting to go home. Now and then one of them would look at some spot on the great globe to see how the weather pattern reacted—to check on a bit of his own work carried out earlier in the day. But he was not really interested; his mind was on the evening’s date, or dinner, or a hockey game. Even Greenberg, head of the Weather Advisors, felt the general lassitude.
Anna Brackney was too bored to sit still. She got up and wandered into the computer room, plopped down again and punched a 2414 computer to check the day’s match. It was 90.4 percent. She muttered, “Lousy,” and then looked around guiltily. She punched the call-up to see what the match had been last week. Ninety point six. She started to say aloud, “Not bad,” but stopped herself in time. James Eden would not approve of her talking to herself. Idly she punched call-up and looked at the results for last month and the month before that. Then she sat bolt upright, and punched for data for the last six months. Very loudly she said, “Well, well, well, well, what do you know about that?” Ignoring the stares of two computer operators, she marched back into the Weather Room, right up to Greenberg.
“Do you realize,” she said, “that our fit has been slipping a little each week? We are now operating on a fit of a little better than ninety percent, when as recently as six months ago our fit was better than ninety-three percent? Did you realize that?”
Greenberg sat up and looked alert. “No. Are you sure?”
Anna did not bother to answer. Greenberg leaned aside and spoke into a communicator. “Charlie, get me a summary of the weekly fit for the last six months.” He touched a button and said, “Upton, come on out to the Weather Room, will you? We may have a problem.”
Greenberg touched several more buttons. In two minutes there was a circle of people around him, and he held a slip of paper in one hand. He said, “Somehow, in the last six months, we’ve slipped three percentage points in our match. How could that happen?”
The people looked at one another. Upton said, “Everybody thought somebody else was checking the long-term fit. I only compared it with the week before.”
There was a chorus of “So did I,” and Greenberg slapped his forehead. “How in hell could a thing like that happen?” He was a man who normally did not swear. “We’ve been drifting away from acceptable performance for six months and nobody even noticed it? What about the complaints? What kind of complaints we been getting?”
The people shrugged, and Upton spoke for them again. “Nothing special. Just the usual gripes. Two weeks ago the Manitoba Council complained the breeze we made to blow away the mosquitoes was too strong, but—”
“Never you mind,” said Anna Brackney. “That was my mathematical model on that problem, and the twenty-knot wind they got was just right to eliminate the mosquitoes because the foresters—”
“Knock it off,” said Greenberg. “I take it there have been no serious complaints? I’d better check further.” He talked into the phone with one of the secretaries, then said to the group, “Well, it seems we’ve been lucky. Anyhow, we’ve got to find out what’s wrong. And we’ve got to find it before somebody else notices it, or we’ll have the Weather Council on our necks. I wonder if I ought to call President Wilburn.”
The people shook their heads, and Upton said, “I don’t like to be sneaky or anything like that. But if we’ve somehow slipped in our procedures and got away with it, let’s correct them without stirring up trouble. You know politicians.”
Greenberg said, “We’ll all have to stay on this until we find it. All of you willing?”
The people gave up their visions of dinner and dates and hockey games and nodded.
“Okay, then. Each of you set up a program designed to make an independent repeat of your models for the last six months. Most of it was routine stuff, so it won’t be bad. Call in the computer technicians and utilize all of the university’s sta
ff and equipment you need. If you need more, I’ll set up a net and we can pull in everything we need from beyond Stockholm. Monitor your steps and when you find an error feed it into the 9680 as a collecting computer. Any other suggestions?”
The people shook their heads.
“All right. Let’s get to work and solve this before anybody else even knows there’s a problem. Good luck.” A red light flashed on the phone at Greenberg’s elbow, and the operator’s voice said, “Dr. Greenberg, President Wilburn is on the phone. Some kind of emergency.”
Greenberg looked startled. He picked up the phone and listened. In a moment he turned up the audio so that the people could hear what Wilburn was saying.
* * * *
The ox was almost done, and it smelled mighty good to Big John Sommerville. He stood at the edge of the great patio and looked across it through the morning groups of people to where the ox slowly turned on the spit. A cloud of steam rose above it and quickly disappeared in the still, dry air. Beyond the barbecue pit with its automatic basters, auxiliary heaters, powder sprinklers, temperature sensors and color detectors stood one of the cattle barns, and beyond that the roll of the prairie began. It was picture-pretty: a stand of oak and maple on the forward slope, a road winding up, a stream meandering down the dip at the foot of the first hill fed from some hidden subterranean channel that groped its way to the low mountains. Big John Sommerville turned to look at the house.
It rambled and twisted behind him, cloaked in brown-stained shingles and roofed with cedar. It sprawled and sprouted unexpected wings and went on for three hundred feet. There was a story that two years ago there had been eight guests in that house for a week before Big John found out about it. It was a good house, built for comfort, and it had a sense of belonging.
Big John Sommerville hooked his thumbs in his belt and started to stroll over toward the roasting ox. His face was craggy with little sags in the right places, and his body was big with a thin layer of fat over hard muscles, a good Texas face on a good Texas body.
“Hey, John, when do we eat?”
“Half an hour, I reckon.” He walked on.
A hand slapped him on the shoulder, jolted him a little off-balance. As he turned he said, “You hungry, too, Brian?”
“Sure am.” It was Brian Travers, mayor of Austin, the third most potent political figure in the area, and he held a large glass of straight bourbon. “I can wait through another pint or so of bourbon, but then I’m going to put me away a hindquarter of that ox. Hope it’s as good as the last.”
“Ought to be. Why, hello, Henry. Just get here?”
Henry Carpenter shook hands and looked around cautiously. “Everything under control? They all here?”
Travers said, “They’re here. Quit worrying, Henry. We’ll get it.” The three of them had arranged the ox roast for a hundred of the major and minor citizens of the region to win over their support for a proposed monorail shipping line. It never hurt to line up the solid citizenry on your side before you tackled the local, state and national officials. “We’ll get them feeling comfortable on John’s bourbon and ox, and then we’ll tell them what we want to do. They’ll go along, all right.”
“Got a surprise,” said Big John Sommerville. “I got to a few ears and I made out a case for a little water table replenishment around here. In exactly an hour and a half we will have a gentle rainfall on the mountains right behind the house, just over that near ridge. The time and position will be just right for the damnedest rainbow you ever saw in your life—the pot of gold will be right on top of that rise there. I’ll announce the rainfall a half hour before it’s due, and we’ll let these fellows think I got extra-special connections at the Weather Council. When these fellows see what I can do with the Council, they’ll split their britches to get behind us on the monoline. Right?”
Travers and Carpenter raised their glasses and took a long pull in honor of Big John Sommerville.
The bourbon was smooth, the ox was tender and tasty, and the announcement came at just the right time. The clouds formed on schedule. And then the rains came. The black heavens opened up and poured out their watery hell all over the spread of Big John Sommerville. Something like twelve inches of rain fell in the first twenty minutes, and the meandering stream turned into a devastating giant that swept away the barn and the stand of trees and the winding road. The water roared down the gentle slope behind the house and burst through the glass doors that opened out on the concealed porches and little hideaway nooks at the back of the house. The basement quickly filled with water, and the water lifted the floor joists from the plates. The little subterranean waterways built up pressure and quickly saturated the soil to a depth of fifteen feet. A mud slide started that transformed the entire house into a kind of roller coaster. Big John Sommerville felt it start and succeeded in getting everybody out of the house, so there were no casualties. In a final cloudburst, the rainstorm passed away.
One hundred and three men stood on a rocky ledge and looked in awe at all that was left of the house, garages, barns, corral, fences, and trees: a sea of soupy mud with occasional pieces of lumber protruding at crazy angles. The bare bones of the hill showed, and the barbecue pit lay somewhere downslope under fifty feet of mud.
“Big John,” said Travers, “when you order yourself a rain, you really order yourself a rain.”
* * * *
It took Big John Sommerville three hours to reach a phone, and by that time his plans were made. First he called the Governor, explained what had happened and what he intended to do. It turned out that the Governor also had some information about a weather order or two that had gone wrong. So the Governor made a few calls himself, ending with a call to Wilburn’s office to say that an important constituent named Big John Sommerville would soon be calling to talk to Wilburn about an important problem, and please arrange to have President Wilburn take the call. Big John Sommerville placed a few additional calls to other district councilmen, to three other governors, to several mayors and to half a dozen wealthy industrialists. As it happened, many of these people had some small pieces of information of their own about weather mishaps. When these folk called President Wilburn’s office to suggest the President listen to what Big John Sommerville had to say, they also tossed into the conversation a few pointed remarks about weather control and sloppy management.
In two hours’ time, the communications network surrounding President Wilburn’s office in Sicily was in a snarled mess out of which, nevertheless, two pertinent facts stood out: One, many good citizens were acutely unhappy about the weather control, and, two, Big John Sommerville was acoming.
When Big John Sommerville himself got on the line, President Wilburn was sitting there waiting. The five hours of pent-up anger burst into his office while he sat and marveled. The dirty red face that glared at him, the mud-caked hair, the ripped shirt, the glorious, near incoherence of the teeth-clenched stream of words were all fascinating. Never in his political life had President Wilburn received such a dressing down. Partway through it, Wilburn had to remind himself that the situation was not funny. He was, in fact, in the midst of a totally unexpected crisis.
The screen went blank. Big John Sommerville had had his say.
Wilburn sat quietly and reflected. The world government was not so mighty that one influential and irate citizen could not shake it a little. There should be no false moves now. First, he had to find out what had gone wrong. He called Greenberg at the Advisors.
* * * *
Greenberg had just turned up the audio.
“Let me make certain there is no misunderstanding,” said Wilburn. “Every staff member of the Advisors and all associated personnel are hereby placed on an emergency basis, and you have authority to do whatever is necessary—I repeat, whatever is necessary—to get to the bottom of this and correct it. Money, time, people, equipment, anything you need you get. In twelve hours I want a preliminary report from you, and hopefully you will have the complete answers by that tim
e. If not, your entire organization will stay on the problem until it is solved. Routine work will be suspended except for weather control requests you receive personally from me. Do you have any questions?”
“No, Mr. President,” and they hung up.
Anna Brackney said, “Why didn’t you tell him we had just discovered the problem ourselves?”
Greenberg gave her a look, then said to the group, “All right, let’s go the way we planned. I guess we were dreaming a little to think we were going to solve this before anybody else caught on.”
As they turned and walked away, Greenberg heard Anna Brackney say to Hiromaka, “But I don’t understand why he didn’t tell him we had already found out there was a problem.”
Hiromaka said, “Aw, shut up.”
* * * *
At breakfast the next morning Harriet Wilburn said to Jonathan, “I guess this will be a bad one. We’d better make it a good breakfast; lunch may be a little tense.” She poked the Diner for his coffee and then began making his onion-flavored eggs basted with pork sauce.
Orbit 8 - [Anthology] Page 15
