Part 14 (2/2)
”You must,” the boy said. ”You promise. Look--all the meat. Meat for two, three villages.”
Mike shook his head. ”I can't do it,” he said. ”That isn't meat.
That's life. Bigger life than we are. Don't you understand? Oh, the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l with it! Come on.”
The boy wasn't listening to him. He was watching the elephant. And now he started to tremble.
For the elephant was moving up onto solid ground. It moved slowly, daintily, almost mincing as its legs sampled the surface of the sh.o.r.e.
Then it looked up and this time there was no doubt as to the direction of its gaze--it stared intently at Mike and the boy on the bank. Its ears fanned, then flared. Suddenly the elephant raised its trunk and trumpeted fiercely.
And then, lowering the black battering-ram of its head, the beast came forward. A deceptively slow lope, a scarcely accelerated trot, and then all at once it was moving swiftly, swiftly and surely and inexorably towards them. The angle of the bank was not steep and the elephant's speed never slackened on the slope. Its right shoulder struck a sapling and the sapling splintered. It was cras.h.i.+ng forward in full charge. Again it trumpeted, trunk extended like a flail of doom.
”Shoot!” screamed the boy.
Mike didn't want to shoot. He wanted to run. He wanted to flee the mountain, flee the incredible breathing bulk of this grotesque giant.
But he was a white hunter, he was a man, and a man is not a beast; a man does not run away from life in any shape or size.
The trunk came up. Mike raised the gun. He heard the monster roar, far away, and then he heard another sound that must be the gun's discharge, and something hit him in the shoulder and knocked him down.
Recoil? Yes, because the elephant wasn't there any more; he could hear the cras.h.i.+ng and thras.h.i.+ng down below, over the rim of the river bank.
Mike stood up. He saw the boy running now, running back to the bearers huddled along the edge of the trail.
He rubbed his shoulder, picked up his gun, reloaded. The sounds from below had ceased. Slowly, Mike advanced to the lip of the bank and stared down.
The bull elephant had fallen and rolled into the wallow once more. It had taken a direct hit, just beneath the right ear, and even as Mike watched, its trunk writhed feebly like a dying serpent, then fell forward into the mud. The gigantic ears twitched, then flickered and flopped, and the huge body rolled and settled.
Suddenly Mike began to cry.
d.a.m.n it, he hadn't _wanted_ to shoot. If the elephant hadn't charged like that--
But the elephant _had_ to charge. Just as he _had_ to shoot. That was the whole secret. The secret of life. And the secret of death, too.
Mike turned away, facing the east. Kenyarobi was east, and he'd be going there now. Nothing to hold him here in the forests any longer.
He wouldn't even wait for the big feast. To h.e.l.l with elephant-meat, anyway. His hunting days were over.
Mike walked slowly up the trail to the waiting boys.
And behind him, in the wallow, the flies settled down on the lifeless carca.s.s of the last elephant in the world.
8. Harry Collins--2029
The guards at Stark Falls were under strict orders not to talk. Each prisoner here was exercised alone in a courtyard runway, and meals were served in the cells. The cells were comfortable enough, and while there were no telescreens, books were available--genuine, old-style books which must have been preserved from libraries dismantled fifty years ago or more. Harry Collins found no t.i.tles dated later than 1975. Every day or so an attendant wheeled around a cart piled high with the dusty volumes. Harry read to pa.s.s the time.
At first he kept antic.i.p.ating his trial, but after a while he almost forgot about that possibility. And it was well over a year before he got a chance to tell his story to anyone.
When his opportunity came, his audience did not consist of judge or jury, doctor, lawyer or penologist. He spoke only to Richard Wade, a fellow-prisoner who had been thrust into the adjoining cell on the evening of October 11th, 2013.
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