William Sanders - Amba

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Amba

William Sanders

From Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection (2006)

William Sanders is a semi-retired author who has been writing speculative fiction professionally

since the 1980s. He first wrote a number of well-received novels and then turned to the short

story, which he considers his strongest form. Many of his tales have appeared in this magazine,

including the recent Nebula finalist "Dry Bones" (May 2003). We are delighted that Will came out

of his semi-retirement to write the following story of the all-too-near future.

The client looked at his watch and then at Logan, raising an eyebrow. Logan nodded and spread his

hands palm-down in what he hoped was a reassuring gesture. The client shook his head and went back

to staring at the clearing below. His face was not happy.

Rather than let his own expression show, Logan turned his head and looked toward the other end of the

blind, where Yura, the mixed-blood tracker, sat cross-legged with his old bolt-action Mosin rifle across

his lap. Yura gave Logan a ragged steel-capped grin and after a moment Logan grinned back.

When he could trust his face again he turned back to look out the blind window. The sun was high now;

yellow light angled down through the trees and dappled the ground. The early morning wind had died

down and there was no sound except for the snuffling and shuffling of the half-grown pig tethered on the

far side of the clearing.

The client was doing something with his camera. It was quite an expensive-looking camera; Logan didn't

recognize the make. Now he was checking his damned watch again. Expensive watch, too. Definitely an

upscale client. His name was Steen and he was an asshole.

Actually, Logan told himself without much conviction, Steen wasn't too bad, certainly not as bad as some

of the other clients they'd had. He had a superior attitude, but then most of them did. But he was

impatient, and that made him a real pain in the ass to have around, especially on a blind sit. All right, it

was a little cramped inside the camouflaged tree blind, and you had to keep as still as possible; but all

that had been explained to him in advance and if he had a problem with any of it he should have stayed

back in Novosibirsk watching wildlife documentaries on television.

They'd been sitting there all morning, now, and maybe Steen thought that was too long. But hell, that was

no time at all when you were waiting for a tiger, even on a baited site within the regular territory of a

known individual.

Steen's shoulders lifted and fell in what was probably a silent sigh. At least he knew how to be quiet, you

had to give him that much. Not like that silly son of a bitch last year, down in the Bikin valley, who made

enough noise to scare off everything between Khabarovsk and Vladivostok and then demanded a refund

because he hadn't gotten to--

Logan felt a sudden touch on his shoulder. He looked around and saw Yura crouching beside him,

holding up a hand. The lips moved beneath the gray-streaked mustache, forming a silent word: "Amba."

Logan looked out the blind window, following Yura's pointing finger, but he saw nothing. Heard nothing,

either, nothing at all now; the pig had stopped rooting around and was standing absolutely still, facing in

the same direction Yura was pointing.

Steen was peering out the window too, wide-eyed and clutching his camera. He glanced at Logan, who

nodded.

And then there it was, padding out into the sunlit clearing in all its great burnt-orange magnificence.

Out of the corner of his eye, Logan saw Steen clap a hand over his mouth, no doubt to stifle a gasp. He

didn't blame him; a male Amur tiger, walking free and untamed on his home turf, was a sight to take the

breath of any man. As many times as he'd been through this, his own throat still went thick with awe for

the first seconds.

The pig took an altogether different view. It began squealing and lunging desperately against its tether, its

little terrified eyes fixed on the tiger, which had stopped now to look it over.

The client had his camera up to his face now, pressing the button repeatedly, his face flushed with

excitement. Logan wondered if he realized just how lucky he was. This was one hell of a big tiger, the

biggest in fact that Logan had ever seen outside a zoo. He guessed it would go as much as seven or eight

hundred pounds and pretty close to a dozen feet from nose to tip of tail, though it was hard to be sure

about the last now that the tail was rhythmically slashing from side to side as the tiger studied the pig.

If Steen was any good at all with that camera he ought to be getting some fine pictures. A bar of sunlight

was falling on the tiger's back, raising glowing highlights on the heavy fur that was browner and more

subdued than the flame-orange of a Bengal, the stripes less prominent, somehow making the beast look

even bigger.

The tiger took a couple of hesitant, almost mincing steps, the enormous paws making no sound on the

leaf mold. It might be the biggest cat in the world, but it was still a cat and it knew something wasn't quite

right about this. It couldn't smell the three men hidden nearby, thanks to the mysterious herbal mixture

with which Yura had dusted the blind, but it knew that pigs didn't normally show up out in the middle of

the woods, tethered to trees.

On the other hand, it was hungry.

It paused, the tail moving faster, and crouched slightly. The massive shoulder muscles bunched and

bulged as it readied itself to jump--

Steen sneezed.

It wasn't all that much of a sneeze, really not much more than a snort, and Steen managed to muffle most

of it with his hand. But it was more than enough. The tiger spun around, ears coming up, and looked

toward the direction of the sound--for an instant Logan had the feeling that the great terrible eyes were

looking straight into his--and then it was streaking across the clearing like a brush fire, heading back the

way it had come. A moment later it was gone.

Behind him Logan heard Yura mutter, "Govno."

"I'm sorry," Steen said stupidly. "I don't know why--"

"Sure." Logan shrugged. He heaved himself up off the little bench and half-stood, half-crouched in the

low-roofed space. "Well, at least you got some pictures, didn't you?"

"I think so." Steen did something to his camera and a little square lit up on the back, showing a tiny

colored picture. "Yes." He looked up at Logan, who was moving toward the curtained doorway at the

rear of the blind. "Are we leaving now? Can't we wait, see if it comes back?"

"He won't," Logan said. "His kind got hunted almost to extinction, not all that long ago. He knows there

are humans around. He's not going to risk it just for a pork dinner. Hell, you saw him. He hasn't been

starving."

"Another one, perhaps--"

"No. Tigers are loners and they demand a hell of a lot of territory. A big male like that, he'll have easily

fifty, a hundred square miles staked out. Maybe more."

They were speaking English; for some reason it was what Steen seemed to prefer, though his Russian

was as good as Logan's.

"Now understand," Logan went on, "you've paid for a day's trip. If you want to stay and watch, you

might get to see something else. Wolves for sure, soon as they hear that pig squealing. Maybe even a

bear, though that's not likely. But you already saw a couple of bears, day before yesterday, and you said

you'd seen wolves before."

"Yes. They are very common around Novosibirsk." Steen sighed. "I suppose you're right. May as well

go back."

"All right, then." Logan started down the ladder and paused. The pig was still screaming. "Yura," he said

tiredly in Russian, "for God's sake, shoot the damned pig."

* * * *

A little while later they were walking down a narrow trail through the woods, back the way they had

come early that morning. Logan brought up the rear, with Steen in front of him and Yura leading the way,

the old Mosin cradled in his arms. Steen said, "I suppose he's got the safety on?"

Yura grunted. "Is not safe," he said in thickly accented but clear English, not looking around. "Is gun."

The back of Steen's neck flushed slightly. "Sorry," he said, "Really, I'm glad one of us is armed. With that

animal out there somewhere."

Logan suppressed a snort. In fact he was far from sure that Yura would shoot a tiger, even an attacking

one. To the Udege and the other Tungus tribes, Amba was a powerful and sacred spirit, almost a god, to

be revered and under no circumstances to be harmed.

On the other hand, Yura was half Russian--unless you believed his story about his grandfather having

been a Krim Tatar political prisoner who escaped from a gulag and took refuge in a remote Nanai

village--and there was never any telling which side would prove dominant. Logan had always suspected it

would come down to whether the tiger was attacking Yura or someone else.

The gun was mainly for another sort of protection. This was a region where people got up to things:

dealers in drugs and stolen goods, animal poachers, army deserters, Chinese and Korean illegals and the

people who transported them. You never knew what you might run into out in the back country; tigers

were the least of the dangers.

The trail climbed up the side of a low but steep ridge covered with dense second-growth forest. The day

was chilly, even with the sun up, and there were still a few small remnant patches of snow here and there

under the trees, but even so Logan had to unzip his jacket halfway up the climb and he could feel the

sweat starting under his shirt. At the top he called a rest break and he and Steen sat down on a log. Yura

went over and leaned against a tree and took out his belt knife and began cleaning the blade on some

leaves; despite Logan's order he'd cut the pig's throat rather than waste a valuable cartridge.

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William Sanders - Amba

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