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Cayden woke early the following morning, excitement and anxiety prohibiting him from any meaningful sleep. The doll at his side stirred against him the moment he opened his eyes, and Cayden again resisted her temptation. He slipped the doll an extra bonus of cash, hoping perhaps that the clone might find someplace other than a bed in which to spend her time, though Cayden knew the doll would only hurry back to the station and forfeit that extra money before standing in a glass window to court another lover. The pleasure was that doll’s purpose and only desire. The loving was the reason she had been made.
The doll girl blew a kiss in Cayden’s direction as she led herself out of the room, and Cayden mumbled to himself as he flung open his closet door.
“What does a great hunter pack for an expedition?”
Cayden knew his father lived for the hunt much like doll girls lived for the lovemaking. Cayden felt he had always been a second-hand priority to that great hunter Wyatt Holmes, and so Cayden learned at a young age how to care for himself after losing his mother to the third epidemic of the new consumption. Wyatt left his boy to the care of the household staff the family’s dwindling estate afforded, and during those years Cayden learned how to occupy himself. He tossed himself into the study of genetic programs toiling to fill the new wild with animals engineered to replace all the extinct creatures of the original world. He painted watercolor vistas of his father’s beloved savanna, and he decorated his room with the maps he inked during each of Wyatt’s expeditions to track his father’s progress through the tall grasses. He made cardboard flashcards of every new creature featured in the glowing pixel pages, on which he noted every animal’s inclination towards aggression, or the ways those creatures blended into their environments. Studying the genetic recipe of the hammer rhino first inspired him to decipher the symbols tattooed around the eyes of the household’s clone servants. As a boy, Cayden believed his study might aid his father’s hunt, and Cayden never tired of the stories and trophies Wyatt brought home following his latest forays in the veld.
“It’s probably a waste of my time to worry over my bags,” Cayden grunted as he threw another wind jacket into his luggage. “The old man’s likely got everything already packed for me. Old Wyatt never lets anyone else take care of the details.”
Cayden closed the luggage. Why bother guessing any further about the gear the savanna would require? He would do better to unpack all those jackets and replace them with genetic composition charts and research journals describing the latest variants of genetically crafted insect and fauna. Wasn’t knowledge as valuable as any weapon Wyatt already packed for him?
Wyatt’s classmates frowned at his fascination with the hunting expeditions advertised with the brightest hues the pixel pages could glow. Having perhaps the world’s greatest hunter as a father little impressed Cayden’s academic rivals, who judged it very foolish to hurry into the new wild to simply kill the wonderful creatures meant to reintroduce life into the barren land. They asked why hunters like Cayden’s father couldn’t accept the lessons of the great extinction. Why should they dedicate themselves to genetic recipes and wildlife creation if men and women were going to again kill it all into oblivion? Cayden’s classmates cared little for the expedition’s defense that those hunters provided sustenance for the clones. Those classmates believed those who spent such fortunes for a spot on the expedition’s rosters cared only for spectacle and thrill. Cayden thought it was a shame that none of his classmates had a mother and father cut from the old rock like Wyatt Holmes. They might understand what the expedition had to offer if they had such a man for a father. They might see how much the new wild had to teach them regarding the mysteries of the genome.
Cayden would approach those very mysteries on his first expedition into the new wild. The hunt would give him a chance to directly observe those splendid creatures hatched from the genetic laboratories, to measure how well those beasts flourished in the grasses growing from the old world’s ruins. He would measure that difficult balance humanity’s science strove to establish, to see if the synthetic locust swarms didn’t multiple out of hand and devour too much of the grass the genolopes’ stomachs required. He would observe the terrifying splicer-lynx prowl, and he would report to that creature’s makers if the feline ate too freely of the game the new wild offered. His knowledge would expand beyond the constraints of the classroom. He would begin to gain a field researcher’s expertise. When his rivals narrowed their focus onto narrow textbooks and exercises, Cayden would observe the ecosystem’s larger picture and learn what was needed so that every piece fit together. And after he returned from the expedition, the genetic engineers would invite him into their ranks, where he might design the chromosomal markers that lifted new eagles into the sky, or where he might shape the curve of a new doll girl’s hips should he crave something unique in the year’s pleasure line.
“No more. That’s all I can carry.” Cayden grinned to see how he fit his needs into a single duffle bag. “The old man will be pleased to see how I can travel light. No need for me to give the mudders any more to carry.”
Cayden heard a buzz and hurried into the hall. He heard his father barking commands to his clones before he rushed through his apartment complex’s entrance. His father’s voice reminded Cayden of how he admired his father strength. He marveled at everything Wyatt Homles survived: the wars, the diseases, the famines and the hunts. He felt proud as he looked upon his father, standing with the proud, straight back, with his spectacles and his handlebar mustache. Wyatt wore his silly pith helmet, and Cayden thought his father looked like some hunter taken from the page of an old encyclopedia.
Cayden vowed he wouldn’t disappoint Wyatt. He vowed he would please his father by doing what Wyatt invited him to the savanna to accomplish. Cayden Holmes promised himself that he would pull the trigger.
Wyatt grinned and slapped his son’s back. “You’re up early, boy. You just might take a trophy yet. But I’m worried about one thing.”
Cayden held a breath. “What’s that?”
“I’m concerned you’ve packed too light.”
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Old Hunters on the New Wild Page 4
