Away, away, we're bound for the mountain,
Bound for the mountain, bound for the mountain,
Over the hill, the wildwood's acallin',
Away to the chase, away, away!
"I seem to recall," Rosalind remarked as she scuffed through the leafy debris of the forest floor, "that the name of that song is `Cumberland Mountain Deer Chase.' I thought we were hunting wild pigs."
Betal grinned back and slapped at the pistol thrust into his coverall pocket. "Yes'm, but I don't rightly know no pig-huntin' songs."
A few paces behind, Danny and a companion enjoyed the good-natured banter. "Each day it's harder to believe that Betal was a KGB thug."
"One of Empleado's enforcers?" Dlee Raftan Saon asked.
"Yes, Doctor, that beating seems to have done him a world of good."
"Call me Raftan. Today I am not a healer, but a hunter. For my part, I find it equally hard to believe that your delicate-looking physician insisted on coming with us for more than merely medical reasons."
Danny laughed. "She grew up on her grandfather's tales of stalking tigers and monkeys and God knows what else in the `old country.' Now she wants to try it herself."
He doubted whether the Marine-issue Witnesses she and Betal both carried were adequate for the boar described by their "native guide." Glancing at the stainless .44 magnum in his own hand, he realized he didn't have much confidence, either, in the stopping power of the short-barreled S&W his father had left with him. But they were going to have a hell of a good time finding out, and maybe bring back some roasting pork as a bonus.
It was hard to tell who was in charge. Dr. Nguyen relied for whatever authority she needed on her medical degree. Danny couldn't remember whether that rated her bars or oak leaves. Betal had a commission but it was probably classified. Marna was next in line but she'd signed on as a techie and, like most of the party, had never hunted before. She carried a Mini-30, the same Ruger-designed carbine, in 7.62x39mm Russian, they'd been issued in basic training.
"You're right to wonder," he told Raftan. "In our culture, hunting's sneered at and discouraged." By an aristocracy of wine-and-cheese snots, he thought to himself, who'd converted America into a Marxist state a century ago and continued to rule it from the top down, despite their claim that it was the ultimate democracy.
The physician chuckled. "Only someone who has never gone hungry disdains hunting."
Well, Danny thought, the one promise socialist egalitarianism had kept was that everyone had the same chanceslim and none except for the Volvo nomenklaturaat three meals a day.
"In our culture," Dlee Raftan Saon added, "it's valued, among other reasons, because it's the only thing, besides sapience itself, that all of our species have in common."
Danny felt his eyebrows lift. "Even mobile veggies like whatshername?"
"Why do you think they became mobile? For a number of excellent reasons, all sapients begin as predators."
That would bear thinking about. It certainly explained, Danny thought, why things like wild boars had been included in the terraforming process. In part, this asteroid was a game preserve!
As a second lieutenant, he supposed he came next in rank, but any claim he made to bossing this effort would seem silly beside the credentials of its three lowest-ranking members. It turned out that his nominee for Most Useless Crewman, Staff Sergeant C. C. Jones, had actually done a lot of hunting, illegally, growing up as a country boy. That was probably reflected in his choice of weapon, one of the mission's Remington Model 1100 twelve-gauge semiautomatic riot guns, now loaded with enormous solid slugs. Corporal Roger Owen, another individual of rustic background, carried a Mini-30. Corporal Carlos "Rubber Chicken" Alvarez, cook and garbage disposer, rounded out the trio of experienced hunters with another Remington.
As the party made its way through the woods the three betrayed their past crimes another way, swapping yarns about the power and ferocity of wild pigs they'd hunted before. For Owen it had been javelina in New Mexico, "almost too fast to draw a bead on." Jones and Alvarez had huntedand apparently been hunted bythings called "razorbacks," capable of absorbing dozens of bullets without damage and hamstringing opponents with their sharp, side-reaching tusks. Danny had always thought of pigs as cute little pink things with curly tails who tended to stutter when they got excited.
"There's no finesse to this," Owen had warned him. "These animals are territorial and mean as hell. We'll just spread out, stomp through their front yard, and when they show up to eject trespasserspork chops!"
"Or long pig." Alvarez had chuckled.
Jones had nodded. "Always that possibility." He almost seemed to relish the idea. Danny had gulped and done his best to look intrepid.
The three conferred with Tl*m*nch*l, who had already hunted here and acted as their guide. He seemed to have a few yarns of his own. No one minded that the humans had begun supplementing their rapidly dwindling rations by foraging in the "super kudzu" forest. Mister Thoggosh, making the point through his assistant, had insisted that they hunt only with guides at first. Otherwise, they might kill and eat some sapient no human had ever seen before. There was no lack of individuals willing to "sacrifice" themselveson company timeby hunting with the humans to prevent such a tragedy. Tl*m*nch*l carried a boxy-looking weapon on his equipment belt. His companion, introduced as Dr*f*rst*v, was trying his luck with a Mini-30, like a human hunter opting sportingly for a muzzle-loader or a bow.
But, as Danny explained, there was more involved in this trip than sport. "Since arriving on the asteroid, we Americans have enjoyed what amounts to an all-expense-paid vacation. Without lifting a finger, we're supplied with adequate water, warmth, shelter, and more than ample elbow room."
"Sweet streams flow freely," the physician replied, apparently quoting something, "and the air"
"Is unpolluted," Danny suggested, "unlike that of the world most of us wish, perversely enough, to get back to."
"While overhead, the Elders' canopy protects you from the rigors of space. All of this bounty, my friend, is a simple, unavoidable by-product of arrangements which the Elders and their friends have provided for themselves."
"Yeah. So I understand."
Until now, for protection from weather under the canopy, they'd had the venerable spaceshipsand the shelter beneath their wingswhich had brought them here. For the time being the ships were gone, lifted in the baskets that had lowered them to the surface, on a mission to give 5023 Eris a moon. But even the Elders' makeshift was better than Earth's best. In addition to the cargo bay passenger inserts, removed from the shuttles to make room for internal fuel tanks and set up in the encampment on the equivalent of concrete blocks, tents, self-heating and self-cleaning, now stood in their place. Everyone now had the privacy they hadn't enjoyed since taking off from Earthin some cases, since they'd been born. That was probably why two or three of the women were whispering about missed periods and tender breasts, although Rosalind maintained that it was too early to tell. Few seemed unhappy about any of it, pregnancy included. Eventually, they'd been promised, they'd get their precious ships back. Aelbraugh Pritsch had told them they could keep the tents, as well.
"Although Owen's making noises about building a log cabin."
The insect chuckled again. "So your needs are taken care of by individualistic, capitalistic aliens better than any socialist regime on Earth has ever been able to do."
"That's right. We're getting a free ride on their incidental surplus."
"Let me tell you, young friend: as you've observed, the Elders enjoy a half-billion year lead in areas philosophical as well as technical. They don't view `free riders' as a concern. Theirs is much more than the negligent generosity of a people who've always had enough to eat. Among other factors, they know from experience that it costs more to collect from free riders than it's worth."
Still, as his father had put it on a rare occasion when he'd had too much to drink, socialism at its unclean root is no more than the politics of envy, collectively expressed resentment of achievement. A century of the oppressive poverty it always caused hadn't prepared them to appreciate what they were being given here. It even caused a few to question it.
"If the tables were turned," he told the doctor, "there are plenty of us capable of resenting free riders. And precedents to show that we're willing to waste resources trying to do something about it."
"And it is these individuals who worry most about survival here. How long, they ask, can this suspicious generosity last? Why don't the Elders do what any right-thinking human would in their place? Their education hasn't prepared them to look for what you call the `bottom line,' the ethical aspect of any economic situation."
"And what might that be?"
"To us, Danny, ethics is far more than a conflicting laundry list of free-floating rights and arbitrary wrongs. It's a discipline which asksand in a healthy culture tries to answerthe question, `What is the good?' "
"Well, you're the doctor, Doctor. What is the good?"
"Self-ownership, self-responsibility, whatever you wish, provided it doesn't interfere with someone else's notion of the good. This is why the Elders never worry about free riders. When someone installs and pays for a street light, the benefit he seeks, if he's rational, is the light itself."
"Sounds vaguely Masonic. As opposed to what?"
"As opposed to the dubious satisfaction of denying it to those who don't pay but may incidentally benefit. Didn't one of your own thinkers, Robert LeFevre, observe that a truly ethical person will even blacken a portion of his light so that it won't spill into the window of an unwilling beneficiary?"
Danny laughed. He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. "It's true that nobody in our group understands why we're being helped."
"You find the Elders' generosity perplexing?"
"You could say that."
"You've never observed that it's the capitalist society, rather than the workers' paradise, that gives away matches, food, soap, and other commodities. The catchif you can call it thatis that a producer advertises on the matchbook, or may be handing out samples trying to get you to buy more."
"And what's the catch on 5023 Eris?"
"Mister Thoggosh is probably trying to think of one right now. Of course you have loaned him your spaceships. . . ."
"It's a point in our favor." Danny knew that his father was reluctant to continue depending on the charity of strangers. Despite his socialist background, he tended, in character and principle, to value self-sufficiency and independence. Maybe he'd acquired this antisocialist trait during his training and experience as a pilot. Maybe it was just that somehow the American spirit had survived in him. In any case, the Elders' philosophy regarding the "Forge of Adversity" had been hovering constantly at the back of the general's mind. Danny tried to explain that to Dlee Raftan Saon.
"It seems to me that they're contradicting what they claim to believe in. I've never been sure how much is metaphorical andI mean, does their philosophy describe reality as they conceive it, or does it prescribe action?"
The physician considered. "What makes you feel vulnerable is that your educationthat is, your compulsory government indoctrinationleads you to expect social Darwinists to be less considerate of the needs of others, although another of your philosophers, Charles Curley, once defined capitalism as encouraging the survival of the most helpful."
"I'm just afraid that their ideals won't let them deprive us of a chance to overcome our difficulties and transcend ourselves."
"So that, from a kindness you feel misplaced, the Elders may deny you further help at any time, leaving you to be tested on the Forge and perish."
"Something like that. Don't think I'd be good at perishing gracefully."
"Therefore, in your view as well as your father's, survival depends on seeing to your own needs as completely and as soon as possible."
"At least these guns my dad didn't want to bring are good for something."
"Danny, in an ethical society, no one is ever placed upon the Forge of Adversity. We stand upon it every instant of our lives. The greatest point in your favor is that you are here, doing what you're doing."
"Hunting?"
"Those who make a habit of free rides do not survive in the long run."
"I don't know, Raftan. Tax collectors have been around a long time."
"They strive like any parasite. Still, we attach different meaning to the phrase `long run.' You speak of hundreds of years, I of millions. Tax collectors didn't survive in our civilization. The two, tax collectors and civilization, cannot coexistwatch out!"
Without further warning, a gray-brown blur of feral tusks and bristles crashed from the underbrush and hurled itself in their direction. Danny had a fleeting impression of a flat black snout and amber eyes insane with rage. Lost in the moment, he clamped his gun in both hands the way his father had taught him and Basic Training hadn't. His right hand held the rounded rubber grip, his left hand the right hand. Left arm bent, elbow pointing downward, he tipped his head as if his right arm, stiff and straight before him, were a rifle stock, and kept both eyes open.
The pig was a growing, fuzzy blob, the sharply focused orange insert of the front sight his entire world. He pulled the trigger. The chrome-frosted hammer rose and fell. The short-barreled S&W roared and bucked. He neither heard nor felt it. A ball of blue flame at the muzzle lit the woods for yards around. Danny didn't see it. All he knew was that the big silver slug had plowed a furrow in the leaves behind his target. The wild pig kept coming, straight for his legs the way they'd said it would.
He fired again, to no visible effect, then leaped at the lowest branch of a nearby tree he hadn't consciously realized was there. Scrambling until he straddled the limb, he saw the animal below him shaking itself as if it had crashed headlong into the trunk. He regretted missing that.
Aiming carefully with one hand as his other held him steady in the tree, he shot the pig between the shoulder blades. This time he felt the impact of the .44 magnum in his palm and saw the muzzle bloom with fire, although he couldn't remember hearing the report afterward. The pig went down as if a safe had been dropped on it and didn't even quiver afterward.
"Congratulations, my boy!" From the branch above him, he heard the voice of Dlee Raftan Saon. He turned his head. The physician clung upside down to the tree with four limbs. "Low gravity's a wonderful thing, isn't it?" The insect being laughed. "You've shot a razorback sow, much hardier and more tenacious than the boar."
"Tell me about it!" Danny grinned. He dropped to the ground, his hands shaking a little as he reholstered the revolver. "Tonight I'm bringing home the bacon!"