Part 13 (2/2)

Yes, and now his sane, logical, calm, controlled eyes noted that the distant door was opening, and he sighted through the 'scope and brought his sane, logical, calm, controlled hand up along the barrel to the trigger. He could see the two men emerging, and the shorter, plumper of the two was Leffingwell. He squinted at the high forehead with its receding hairline; it was a perfect target. A little squeeze now and he knew what would happen. In his sane, logical, calm, controlled mind he could visualize the way the black hole would appear in the center of that forehead, while behind it would be the torn and dripping redness flecked with gray--

”What are you doing?”

Harry whirled, staring; staring down at the infant who stood smiling beside him. It _was_ an infant, that was obvious enough, and implicit in the diminutive stature, the delicate limbs and the oversized head.

But infants do not wear the clothing of pre-adolescent boys, they do not enunciate with clarity, they do not stare coolly and knowingly at their elders. They do not say, ”Why do you want to harm Dr.

Leffingwell?”

Harry gazed into the wide eyes. He couldn't speak.

”You're sick, aren't you?” the child persisted. ”Let me call the doctor. He can help you.”

Harry swung the rifle around. ”I'll give you just ten seconds to clear out of here before I shoot.”

The child shook his head. Then he took a step forward. ”You wouldn't hurt me,” he said, gravely. ”You're just sick. That's why you talk this way.”

Harry leveled the rifle. ”I'm not sick,” he muttered. ”I know what I'm doing. And I know all about you, too. You're one of them, aren't you?

One of the first of Leffingwell's brood of illegitimates.”

The child took another step forward. ”I'm not illegitimate,” he said.

”I know who I am. I've seen the records. My name is Harry Collins.”

Somewhere the rifle exploded, the bullet hurtling harmlessly overhead.

But Harry didn't hear it. All he could hear, exploding in his own brain as he went down into darkness, was the sane, logical, calm, controlled voice of his son.

7. Michael Cavendish--2027

Mike was just coming through the clump of trees when the boy began to wave at him. He s.h.i.+fted the clumsy old Jeffrey .475, cursing the weight as he quickened his pace. But there was no help for it, he had to carry the gun himself. None of the boys were big enough.

He wondered what it had been like in the old days, when you could get fullsized bearers. There used to be game all over the place, too, and a white hunter was king.

And what was there left now? Nothing but pygmies, all of them, scurrying around and beating the brush for dibatags and gerenuks. When he was still a boy, Mike had seen the last of the big antelopes go; the last of the wildebeestes and zebra, too. Then the carnivores followed--the lions and the leopards. _Simba_ was dead, and just as well. These natives would never dare to come out of the villages if they knew any lions were left. Most of them had gone to Cape and the other cities anyway; handling cattle was too much of a ch.o.r.e, except on a government farm. Those cows looked like moving mountains alongside the average boy.

Of course there were still some of the older generation left; Kikiyu and even a few Watusi. But the free inoculations had begun many years ago, and the life-cycle moved at an accelerated pace here. Natives grew old and died at thirty; they matured at fifteen. Now, with the shortage of game, the elders perished still more swiftly and only the young remained outside the cities and the farm projects.

Mike smiled as he waited for the boy to come up to him. He wasn't smiling at the boy--he was smiling at himself, for being here. He ought to be in Cape, too, or Kenyarobi. d.a.m.ned silly, this business of being a white hunter, when there was nothing left to hunt.

But somehow he'd stayed on, since Dad died. There were a few compensations. At least here in the forests a man could still move about a bit, taste privacy and solitude and the strange, exotic tropical fruit called loneliness. Even _that_ was vanis.h.i.+ng today.

It was compensation enough, perhaps, for lugging this d.a.m.ned Jeffrey.

Mike tried to remember the last time he'd fired it at a living target.

A year, two years? Yes, almost two. That gorilla up in Ruwenzori country. At least the boys swore it was _ingagi_. He hadn't hit it, anyway. Got away in the darkness. Probably he'd been shooting at a shadow. There were no more gorillas--maybe _they_ had been taking the shots, too. Perhaps they'd all turned into rhesus monkeys.

Mike watched the boy run towards him. It was a good five hundred yards from the river bank, and the short brown legs couldn't move very swiftly. He wondered what it felt like to be small. One's sense of proportion must be different. And that, in turn, would affect one's sense of values. What values applied to the world about you when you were only three feet high?

Mike wouldn't know. He was a big man--almost five feet seven.

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