Mike Resnick - Hunting The Snark

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====================== Hunting the Snark
by
Mike Resnick
======================
Copyright (c)1999 by Mike Resnick
Fictionwise Contemporary
Science Fiction
Hugo Nominee
---------------------------------
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---------------------------------
E-history:
Provided as a freebie by Fictionwise, so I don’t know why they include
The legal notice above
V2.0 - Minor OCR cleanup and some major formatting 12/2000 by me
BELIEVE ME, the last thing we ever expected to find was a Snark.
And I'm just as sure we were the last thing he ever expected to meet.
I wish I could tell you we responded to the situation half as well as he did.
But maybe I should start at the beginning. Trust me: I'll get to the Snark soon
enough.
My name's Karamojo Bell. (Well, actually it's Daniel Mathias Bellman. I've
never been within five thousand light years of the Karamojo district back on
Earth. But when I found out I was a distant descendant of the legendary hunter,
I decided to appropriate his name, since I'm in the same business and I thought
it might impress the clients. Turned out I was wrong; in my entire career, I
met three people who had heard of him, and none of them went on safari with me.
But I kept it anyway. There are a lot of Daniels walking around; at least I'm
the only Karamojo.)
At that time I worked for Silinger & Mahr, the oldest and best-known firm in the
safari business. True, Silinger died 63 years ago and Mahr followed him six
years later and now it's run by a faceless corporation back on Deluros VIII, but
they had better luck with their name than I had with mine, so they never changed
it.
We were the most expensive company in the business, but we were worth it.
Hundreds of worlds have been hunted out over the millennia, but people with
money will always pay to have first crack at territory no one else has set foot
on or even seen. A couple of years ago the company purchased a ten-planet
hunting concession in the newly-opened Albion Cluster, and so many of our
clients wanted to be the first to hunt virgin worlds that we actually held
drawings to see who'd get the privilege. Silinger & Mahr agreed to supply one
professional hunter per world and allow a maximum of four clients per party, and
the fee was (get ready for it!) twenty million credits. Or eight million Maria
Theresa dollars, if you don't have much faith in the credit -- and out here on
the Frontier, not a lot of people do.
We pros wanted to hunt new worlds every bit as much as the clients did. They
were parceled out by seniority, and as seventh in line, I was assigned Dodgson
IV, named after the woman who'd first charted it a dozen years ago. Nine of us
had full parties. The tenth had a party of one -- an incredibly wealthy man who
wasn't into sharing.
Now, understand: I didn't take out the safari on my own. I was in charge, of
course, but I had a crew of twelve blue-skinned humanoid Dabihs from Kakkab
Kastu IV. Four were gunbearers for the clients. (I didn't have one myself; I
never trusted anyone else with my weapons.) To continue: one was the cook, three
were skinners (and it takes a lot more skill than you think to skin an alien
animal you've never seen before without spoiling the pelt), and three were camp
attendants. The twelfth was my regular tracker, whose name -- Chajinka --
always sounded like a sneeze.
We didn't really need a pilot -- after all, the ship's navigational computer
could start from half a galaxy away and land on top of a New Kenya shilling --
but our clients were paying for luxury, and Silinger & Mahr made sure they got
it. So in addition to the Dabihs, we also had our own personal pilot, Captain
Kosha Mbele, who'd spent two decades flying one-man fighter ships in the war
against the Sett.
The hunting party itself consisted of four business associates, all wealthy
beyond my wildest dreams if not their own. There was Willard Marx, a real
estate magnate who'd developed the entire Roosevelt planetary system; Jaxon
Pollard, who owned a matching chains of cut-rate supermarkets and upscale
bakeries that did business on more than a thousand worlds; Philemon Desmond, the
CEO of Far London's largest bank -- with branches in maybe 200 systems -- and
his wife, Ramona, a justice on that planet's Supreme Court.
I don't know how the four of them met, but evidently they'd all come from the
same home world and had known each other for a long time. They began pooling
their money in business ventures early on, and just kept going from one success
to the next. Their most recent killing had come on Silverstrike, a distant
mining world. Marx was an avid hunter who had brought trophies back from half a
dozen worlds, the Desmonds had always wanted to go on safari, and Pollard, who
would have preferred a few weeks on Calliope or one of the other pleasure
planets, finally agreed to come along so that the four of them could celebrate
their latest billion together.
I took an instant dislike to Marx, who was too macho by half. Still, that
wasn't a problem; I wasn't being paid to enjoy his company, just to find him a
couple of prize trophies that would look good on his wall, and he seemed
competent enough.
The Desmonds were an interesting pair. She was a pretty woman who went out of
her way to look plain, even severe; a well-read woman who insisted on quoting
everything she'd read, which made you wonder which she enjoyed more, reading in
private or quoting in public. Philemon, her husband, was a mousy little man who
drank too much, drugged too much, smoked too much, seemed in awe of his wife,
and actually wore a tiny medal he'd won in a school track meet some thirty years
earlier -- probably a futile attempt to impress Mrs. Desmond, who remained
singularly unimpressed.
Pollard was just a quiet, unassuming guy who'd lucked into money and didn't
pretend to be any more sophisticated than he was -- which, in my book, made him
considerably more sophisticated than his partners. He seemed constantly amazed
that they had actually talked him into coming along. He'd packed remedies for
sunburn, diahhrea, insect bites, and half a hundred other things that could
befall him, and jokingly worried about losing what he called his prison pallor.
We met on Braxton II, our regional headquarters, then took off on the six-day
trip to Dodgson IV. All four of them elected to undergo DeepSleep, so Captain
Mbele and I put them in their pods as soon as we hit light speeds, and woke them
about two hours before we landed.
They were starving -- I know the feeling; DeepSleep slows the metabolism to a
crawl, but of course it doesn't stop it or you'd be dead, and the first thing
you want to do when you wake up is eat -- so Mbele shagged the Dabihs out of the
galley, where they spent most of their time, and had it prepare a meal geared to
human tastes. As soon as they finished eating, they began asking questions
about Dodgson IV.
"We've been in orbit for the past hour, while the ship's computer has been
compiling a detailed topographical map of the planet," I explained. "We'll land
as soon as I find the best location for the base camp."
"So what's this world like?" asked Desmond, who had obviously failed to read all
the data we'd sent to him.
"I've never set foot on it," I replied. "No one has." I smiled. "That's why
you're paying so much."
"How do we know there's any game to be found there, then?" asked Marx
pugnaciously.
"There's game, all right," I assured him. "The Pioneer who charted it claims
her sensors pinpointed four species of carnivore and lots of herbivores,
including one that goes about four tons."
"But she never landed?" he persisted.
"She had no reason to," I said. "There was no sign of sentient life, and there
are millions of worlds out there still to be charted."
"She'd damned well better have been right about the animals," grumbled Marx.
"I'm not paying this much to look at a bunch of trees and flowers."
"I've hunted three other oxygen worlds that Karen Dodgson charted," I said, "and
they've always delivered what she promised."
"Do people actually hunt on chlorine and ammonia worlds?" asked Pollard.
"A few. It's a highly specialized endeavor. If you want to know more about it
after the safari is over, I'll put you in touch with the right person back at
headquarters."
"I've hunted a couple of chlorine worlds," interjected Marx.
_Sure you have,_ I thought.
"Great sport," he added.
When you have to live with your client for a few weeks or months, you don't call
him a braggart and a liar to his face, but you do file the information away for
future reference.
"This Karen Dodgson -- she's the one the planet's named for?" asked Ramona
Desmond.
"It's a prerogative of the Pioneer Corps," I answered. "The one who charts a
world gets to name it anything he or she wants." I paused and smiled. "They're
not known for their modesty. Usually they name it after themselves."
"Dodgson," she said again. "Perhaps we'll find a Jabberwock, or a Cheshire Cat,
or even a Snark."
"I beg your pardon?" I said.
"That's was Lewis Carroll's real name: Charles Dodgson."
"I've never heard of him," I replied.
"He wrote _Jabberwocky_ and _The Hunting of the Snark_, along with the Alice
books." She stared at me. "Surely you're read them."
"I'm afraid not."
"No matter," she said with a shrug. "It was just a joke. Not a very funny
one."
In retrospect, I wish we'd found a Jabberwock.
* * * *
_"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,_
_As he landed his crew with care;_
_Supporting each man on the top of the tide_
_By a finger entwined in his hair._
* * * *
Dodgson IV was lush and green, with huge rolling savannahs, thick forests with
trees growing hundreds of feet high, lots of large inland lakes, a trio of
freshwater oceans, an atmosphere slightly richer than Galactic Standard, and a
gravity that was actually a shade lighter than Standard.
While the Dabihs were setting up camp and erecting the self-contained safari
Bubbles near the ship, I sent Chajinka off to collect possible foodstuffs, then
took them to the ship's lab for analysis. It was even better than I'd hoped.
"I've got good news," I announced when I clambered back out of the ship. "There
are at least seventeen edible plant species. The bark of those trees with the
golden blossoms is also edible. The water's not totally safe, but it's close
enough so that if we irradiate it it'll be just fine."
"I didn't come here to eat fruits and berries or whatever the hell Blue Boy
found out there," said Marx gruffly. "Let's go hunting."
"I think it would be better for you and your friends to stay in camp for a day
while Chajinka and I scout out the territory and see what's out there. Just
unwind from the trip and get used to the atmosphere and the gravity."
"Why?" asked Desmond. "What's the difference if we go out today or tomorrow?"
"Once I see what we're up against, I'll be able to tell you which weapons to
take. And while we know there are carnivores, we have no idea whether they're
diurnal or nocturnal or both. No sense spending all day looking for a trophy
that only comes out at night."
"I hadn't thought of that." Desmond shrugged. "You're the boss."
I took Captain Mbele aside and suggested he do what he could to keep them amused
-- tell them stories of past safaris, make them drinks, do whatever he could to
entertain them while Chajinka and I did a little reconnoitering and learned what
we'd be up against.
"It looks pretty normal to me," said Mbele. "A typical primitive world."
"The sensors say there's a huge biomass about two miles west of here," I
replied. "With that much meat on the hoof, there should be a lot of predators.
I want to see what they can do before I take four novices into the bush."
"Marx brags about all the safaris he's been on," complained Mbele. "Why not
take the Great White Hunter with you?"
"Nice try," I said. "But I make the decisions once we're on the ground. You're
stuck with him."
"Thanks a lot."
"Maybe he's been on other safaris, but he's a novice on Dodgson IV, and as far
as I'm concerned that's all that counts."
"Well, if it comes to that, so are you."
"I'm getting paid to risk my life. He's paying for me to make sure he gets his
trophies and doesn't risk _his_." I looked around. "Where the hell did Chajinka
sneak off to?"
"I think he's helping the cook."
"He's got his own food," I said irritably. "He doesn't need ours." I turned in
the direction of the cooking Bubble and shouted: "Chajinka, get your blue ass
over here!"
The Dabih looked up at the sound of my voice, smiled, and pointed to his ears.
"Then get your goddamned t-pack!" I said. "We've got work to do."
He smiled again, wandered off, and returned a moment later with his spear and
his t-pack, the translating mechanism that allowed Man and Dabih (actually, Man
and just about anything, with the proper programming) to converse with one
another in Terran.
"Ugly little creature," remarked Mbele, indicating Chajinka.
"I didn't pick him for his looks."
"Is he really that good?"
"The little bastard could track a billiard ball down a crowded highway," I
replied. "And he's got more guts than most Men I know."
"You don't say," said Mbele in tones that indicated he still considered Dabihs
one step up -- if that -- from the animals we had come to hunt.
* * * *
_"His form is ungainly -- his intellect small -- "_
_(So the Bellman would often remark) -- _
_"But his courage is perfect! And that, after all,_
_Is the thing that one needs with a Snark."_
* * * *
I'm not much for foot-slogging when transportation is available, but it was
going to take the Dabihs at least a day to assemble the safari vehicle and there
was no sense hanging around camp waiting for it. So off we went, Chajinka and
me, heading due west toward a water hole the computer had mapped. We weren't
out to shoot anything, just to see what there was and what kind of weaponry our
clients would need when we went out hunting the next morning.
It took us a little more than an hour to reach the water hole, and once there we
hid behind some heavy bush about fifty yards away from it. There was a small
herd of brown-and-white herbivores slaking their thirst, and as they left, a
pair of huge red animals, four or five tons apiece, came down to drink. Then
there were four or five more small herds of various types of grass-eaters. I
had just managed to get comfortable when I heard a slight scrabbling noise. I
turned and saw Chajinka pick up a slimy five-inch green worm, study its writhing
body for a moment, then pop it into his mouth and swallow it. He appeared
thoughtful for a moment, as if savoring the taste, then nodded his head in
approval, and began looking for more.
Once upon a time that would have disgusted me, but I'd been with Chajinka for
more than a decade and I was used to his eating habits. I kept looking for
predators, and finally asked if he'd spotted any.
He waited for the t-pack to translate, then shook his head. "Night eaters,
maybe," he whispered back.
"I never saw a world where _all_ the carnivores were nocturnal," I answered.
"There have to be some diurnal hunters, and this is the spot they should be
concentrating on."
"Then where are they?"
"You're the tracker," I said. "You tell me."
He sighed deeply -- a frightening sound if you're not used to Dabihs. A few of
the animals at the water hole spooked and ran off thirty or forty yards, raising
an enormous cloud of reddish dust. When they couldn't spot where the noise had
come from, they warily returned to finish drinking.
"You wait here," he whispered. "I will find the predators."
I nodded my agreement. I'd watched Chajinka stalk animals on a hundred worlds,
and I knew that I'd just be a hindrance. He could travel as silently as any
predator, and he could find cover where I would swear none existed. If he had
to freeze, he could stand or squat motionless for up to fifteen minutes. If an
insect was crawling across his face, he wouldn't even shut an eye if it was in
the insect's path. So maybe he regarded worms and insects as delicacies, and
maybe he had only the vaguest notion of personal hygiene, but in his element --
and we were in it now -- there was no one of any species better suited for the
job.
I sat down, adjusted my contact lenses to Telescopic, and scanned the horizon
for the better part of ten minutes, going through a couple of smokeless
cigarettes in the process. Lots of animals, all herbivores, came by to drink.
Almost too many, I decided, because at this rate the water hole would be nothing
but a bed of mud in a few days.
I was just about to start on a third cigarette when Chajinka was beside me
again, tapping me on the shoulder.
"Come with me," he said.
"You found something?"
He didn't answer, but straighted up and walked out into the open, making no
attempt to hide his presence. The animals at the water hole began bleating and
bellowing in panic and raced off, some low to the ground, some zig-zagging with
every stride, and some with enormous leaps. Soon all of them vanished in the
thick cloud of dust they had raised.
I followed him for about half a mile, and then we came to it: a dead catlike
animal, obviously a predator. It had a tan pelt, and I estimated its weight at
300 pounds. It had the teeth of a killer, and its front and back claws were
clearly made for rending the flesh of its prey. Its broad tail was covered with
bony spikes. It was too muscular to be built for sustained speed, but its
powerful shoulders and haunches looked deadly efficient for short charges of up
to one hundred yards.
"Dead maybe seven hours," said Chajinka. "Maybe eight."
I didn't mind that it was dead. I minded that its skull and body were crushed.
And I especially minded that there'd been no attempt to eat it.
"Read the signs," I said. "Tell me what happened."
"Brown cat," said Chajinka, indicating the dead animal, "made a kill this
morning. His stomach is still full. He was looking for a place to lie up, out
of the sun. Something killed him."
"_What_ killed him?"
He pointed to some oblong tracks, not much larger than a human's. "This one is
the killer."
"Where did he go after he killed the brown cat?"
He examined the ground once more, then pointed to the northeast. "That way."
"Can we find him before dark?"
Chajinka shook his head. "He left a long time ago. Four, five, six hours."
"Let's go back to the water hole," I said. "I want you to see if he left any
tracks there."
Our presence frightened yet another herd of herbivores away, and Chajinka
examined the ground.
Finally he straightened up. "Too many animals have come and gone."
"Make a big circle around the water hole," I said. "Maybe a quarter mile. See
if there are any tracks there."
He did as I ordered, and I fell into step behind him. We'd walked perhaps half
the circumference when he stopped.
"Interesting," he said.
"What is?"
"There were brown cats here early this morning," he said, pointing to the
ground. "Then the killer of the brown cat came along -- you see, here, his
print overlays that of a cat -- and they fled." He paused. "An entire family of
brown cats -- at least four, perhaps five -- fled from a single animal that
hunts alone."
"You're sure he's a solitary hunter?"
He studied the ground again. "Yes. He walks alone. Very interesting."
It was more than interesting.
There was a lone animal out there that was higher on the food chain than the
300-pound brown cats. It had frightened away an entire pod of large predators,
and -- this was the part I didn't like -- it didn't kill just for food.
Hunters read signs, and they listen to their trackers, but mostly they tend to
trust their instincts. We'd been on Dodgson IV less than five hours, and I was
already getting a bad feeling.
* * * *
"I kind of expected you'd be bringing back a little something exotic for
dinner," remarked Jaxon Pollard when we returned to camp.
"Or perhaps a trophy," chimed in Ramona Desmond.
"I've got enough trophies, and you'll want to shoot your own."
"You don't sound like a very enthusiastic hunter," she said.
"You're paying to do the hunting," I replied. "My job is to back you up and
step in if things get out of hand. As far as I'm concerned, the ideal safari is
one on which I don't fire a single shot."
"Sounds good to me," said Marx. "What are we going after tomorrow?"
"I'm not sure."
"You're not sure?" he repeated. "What the hell were you doing all afternoon?"
"Scouting the area."
"This is like pulling teeth," complained Marx. "What did you find?"
"I think we may have found signs of Mrs. Desmond's Snark, for lack of a better
name."
Suddenly everyone was interested.
"A Snark?" said Ramona Desmond delightedly. "What did it look like?"
"I don't know," I replied. "It's bipedal, but I've no idea how many limbs it
has -- probably four. More than that is pretty rare in large animals anywhere
in the galaxy. Based on the depth of the tracks, Chajinka thinks it may go
anywhere from 250 to 400 pounds."
"That's not so much," said Marx. "I've hunted bigger."
"I'm not through," I said. "In a land filled with game, it seems to have scared
the other predators out of the area." I paused. "Well, actually, that could be
a misstatement."
"You mean it hasn't scared them off?" asked Ramona, now thoroughly confused.
"No, they're gone. But I called them _other_ predators, and I don't know for a
fact that our Snark is a predator. He killed a huge, catlike creature, but he
didn't eat it."
"What does that imply?" asked Ramona.
I shrugged. "I'm not sure. It could be that he was defending his territory.
Or ... " I let the sentence hang while I considered its implications.
"Or what?"
"Or he could simply enjoy killing things."
"That makes two of us," said Marx with a smile. "We'll go out and kill
ourselves a Snark tomorrow morning."
"Not tomorrow," I said firmly.
"Why the hell not?" he asked pugnaciously.
"I make it a rule never to go after dangerous game until I know more about it
than it knows about me," I answered. "Tomorrow we'll go out shooting meat for
the pot and see if we can learn a little more about the Snark."
"I'm not paying millions of credits to shoot a bunch of cud-chewing alien
cattle!" snapped Marx. "You've found something that practically screams 'Superb
Hunting!' I vote that we go after it in the morning."
"I admire your enthusiasm and your courage, Mr. Marx," I said. "But this isn't
a democracy. I've got the only vote that counts, and since it's my job to
return you all safe and sound at the end of this safari, we're not going after
the Snark until we know more about it."
He didn't say another word, but I could tell that at that moment he'd have been
just as happy to shoot me as the Snark.
* * * *
Before we set out the next morning, I inspected the party's weapons.
"Nice laser rifle," I said, examining Desmond's brand new pride and joy.
"It ought to be," he said. "It cost fourteen thousand credits. It's got night
sights, a vision enhancer, an anti-shake stock ... "
"Bring out your projectile rifle and your shotgun, too," I said. "We have to
test all the weapons."
"But I'm only going to use _this_ rifle," he insisted.
I almost hated to break the news to him.
"In my professional opinion, Dodgson IV has a B3 biosystem," I said. "I already
registered my findings via subspace transmission from the ship last night." He
looked confused. "For sport hunting purposes, that means you have to use a non-
explosive-projectile weapon with a maximum of a .450 grain bullet until the
classification is changed."
"But -- "
摘要：

======================HuntingtheSnarkbyMikeResnick======================Copyright(c)1999byMikeResnickFictionwiseContemporaryScienceFictionHugoNominee---------------------------------NOTICE:Thisworkiscopyrighted.Itislicensedonlyforusebythepurchaser.IfyoudidnotpurchasethisebookdirectlyfromFictionwise...

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