Balook

by Piers Anthony

  It died. They made adjustments. There had been a series of seemingly minor options, choices between settings that seemed to make no difference. Evidently this was not the case. They made changes, and tried again.

  That one also died. So did the next. And the following efforts, as they changed the pattern desperately, seeking the key to survival. They added larger sections of what had been assumed to be counterproductive elements, and tinkered with those. More deaths. But the failures were showing signs of progress, hanging on longer before expiring.

  A hundred or more expensive cultures failed—but in the end five of them formed embryos, of which three developed imperfectly. What distinguished the survivors from the non-survivors was unclear. One of the successes was dispatched to another laboratory for study. The other became, at last, Balook.

  Thor had named him, actually. The nine year old boy had found the full proper name too cumbersome. Baluchitherium, derived from the place where the first fossil bones of the original creatures had been found: Baluchistan, Asia. Present-day Pakistan and Iran. A related type was called Indricotherium; there was some question which was the most accurate designation for this re-created creature. But now everyone used Thor's nickname, and Balook answered to it, at least when Thor called. Ba-look, with the accent on the second syllable, to rhyme with "spook." Ba-LOOK-i-THER-ium. Few folk had ever heard of this creature, the largest mammal ever to walk the earth. One day that ignorance would change.

  Now Balook was seven years old, dating from the time he should normally have been born. Of course he had never been born; he had just grown from test-tube culture to incubator item to laboratory specimen to stable. He was not yet mature; he would fill out slowly for several more years.

  Just as Thor himself would, he reflected as he pedaled along the haphazard trail. It wasn't bad traveling, so far, because the forest land in the vicinity of the ranch was kept clear of underbrush, and Balook naturally chose the firmest footing. One misstep could kill an animal that size, because the height and mass of the body were both so great. Balook took care never to misstep.

  The tractor-trails passed through at regular intervals, for the trees were constantly thinned, trimmed, watered and fertilized. Balook's spoor was following one of those trails at present.

  Suddenly Thor was facing a moving tractor. The machine was just heaving over the rise that had hidden it, and the hum of the electric motor was scarcely audible even at close range. It was robot controlled, of course, and not programmed to stop for intruders.

  The machine came on so swiftly that Thor had to career off the path to get out of the way. The solid machine moved on past, dragging a parcel of trimmings behind it, taking no notice of him.

  Suppose Balook ran into such a tractor?

  Thor smiled. That was no problem. Balook would either avoid the thing or step over it. Balook distrusted machinery, perhaps because it vaguely resembled an animal but had no proper smell or manner.

  Now he came to a stream. Balook had crossed and gone on. Thor knew he should dismount and carry his bike across, but he couldn't resist using the boosters again. He touched the switch, moving it only slightly so that he did not get too much lift. Even so, he caught a glimpse of distant power line towers, like skeletal giants marching across the horizon. What would the world do without power! He sailed across the rocky water and landed neatly on the other side. Actually, this maneuver saved time, and used only a few seconds of boost; he hadn't really wasted it.

  Why had Balook broken out? It didn't make sense!

  Suppose someone had intruded, and fired at Balook? Skip had pooh-poohed the notion of someone shooting at the huge animal. But Skip knew it had happened before.

  Private guns were outlawed, true—but the law was violated widely, and only enforced when someone got hurt. Unauthorized people did not carry guns openly, but could have concealed weapons. Many outsiders resented the resources used in the Project. They felt that the development of an extinct animal was wasted effort, since the world was already pinched and overcrowded. Some of those same people, oddly, also objected to the "waste" of unoccupied national forests. It seemed that they had a low tolerance for any land or any thing that did not contribute directly to their comfort, and they took no comfort in nature. That might have accounted for the old-timer who had one morning fired a .22 bullet into Balook's shoulder.

  The man had been arrested and fined, and of course his gun had been confiscated. Balook recovered; he was too massive to be seriously hurt by that caliber. But he still carried the tiny scar, and remembered the pain. He was afraid of the sound of gunfire, or any similar noise. Once workmen had used a power riveter for an addition to the stable, and Balook had gone wild. He had knocked down the stable walls faster than the workmen were putting them up. So if anyone had come near the fence this time and made a loud noise, even firing blanks...

  Could Don Scale have set off a firecracker behind Balook, making him leap through the barrier? No, no, the suspicion was paranoid! Scale simply would not do that, ever. Even if someone else had done it, this would not explain why Balook had kept on going. He might have crashed out and run for a distance, yes, but not this purposeful journey west.

  Thor was breathing hard, now, though he was an experienced biker. The terrain was becoming rougher as the trail neared the edge of the cleared forest. There was a road a kilometer or so ahead; Thor was familiar with this section. Why would Balook head for a highway?

  Balook did not know the motor-vehicle road was there, of course. Maybe he had stopped when he saw it, and Thor would find him waiting, bewildered. Mission accomplished?

  Thor condemned the destructive ignorance of the pot-shotter, but he knew that the evil was more than one man or one gun, and could not be eliminated by one arrest. Even now there was a legislative narrowness that condemned the Project as an inflationary waste. Skip had spoken of this attitude often, spitting deliberately on the ground as if there were a bad taste in his mouth. Indeed, Balook had cost a lot of money. Don Scale had mentioned five hundred million dollars, but Thor was sure that was only a small part of it.

  The truth was that Balook was significant, not only as a living unextinct animal and the largest land mammal who ever lived, but as the key to the creation of new forms of life. All the failed experiments, the mutated animal fetuses—these had led up to the first real success. Balook had shown the way, so that it could be done for other creatures or even human beings without the same horrible mistakes. This would surely benefit man and save many times its cost of development, in the long run. Skip had discussed this, too, and Thor had pretty well assimilated the entire dialogue. This was one type of study at which this poor student had had real motivation to succeed.

  But he did not need intellectual reasons to help Balook! He loved the big animal, and that would have sufficed even if nothing else mattered.

  Balook's trail intersected a bicycle route, which was not surprising, as these trails crisscrossed the nation as well as the region. The prints followed this. Excellent; Thor could make real time along this stretch. He was lucky he lived in a time when self-propelled vehicles— human, not motor propelled—were the main form of private transportation. Even ten years ago there had been more cars than bikes!

  He cocked his head, hearing a noise: a kind of thud-thud-thud! Could that be Balook? It was off the trail, but the rhino could have circled back, losing the way. It really didn't sound like Balook; still...

  Thor left the path and pedaled across, orienting on the noise. The closer he got, the less familiar it sounded. There was something sinister about it. What could Balook be doing?

  Then he broke upon the source—and was shocked. It wasn't Balook. It was a tree poacher.

  The man was pounding in the last of four anchor-stakes, using a muffled sledge to stifle the noise. The tree was already guyed by three slow-stretch springs, the kind that would let it down no faster than a meter in five or six seconds, if the anchors were secure. A silent felling, and a careful coverup—s
o that after the theft there would be nothing but uninterrupted forest floor. With luck, the crime would not have been discovered until the next tree inventory survey.

  Except for the coincidence of Thor's search for Balook.

  Fury blinded him. "Stop, thief!" Thor cried—and realized instantly that he was being melodramatic and foolish. For this was no petty unpremeditated violation like casual mayhem; this was wilderness despoilation.

  The poacher whirled around, raising his sledge. Thor knew he was in trouble. The poacher would be reconditioned if caught, and was ready to kill to avoid that fate. To many people, death was hardly worse than reconditioning; both processes destroyed a person's present individuality.

  Thor's hand jumped to the booster control. He shot upward as the slow sledge swung. It caught his rear wheel, glancingly, knocking him out of control. He hadn't cleared in time!

  But the very distortion of his travel helped him, for as the bike wobbled in the air, the booster jets intersected the body of the man below. They were strong and hot at this close range, as they had to be to maintain the weight of bike and rider. They pushed the man back, burning him. He cursed, scrambling clear.

  Now Thor remembered the phone. He pushed down its button. "There's a poacher here!" he gasped to Skip.

  "Oh there is, is there!" Skip answered grimly. "Okay, lad—we've got a fix on it. We'll catch him. You go on about your business."

  Thor returned to Balook's trail, shaken by the episode. He had just sent a living man into reconditioning! The police would be landing within a minute. No copters were convenient for a five hundred million dollar Baluchitherium search, but poachers at a fixed location were another matter. No chance for the man to flee undetected.

  The poachers were getting bolder, to operate right here in protected forest land! He had known they existed; the newscasts mentioned such outrages frequently. But to actually encounter such a criminal in the flesh—that left his heart pounding unpleasantly.

  He knew why they did it. Fresh wood brought a phenomenal price on the black market. Still...

  Sometimes Thor wished he had been born sooner, so that he could have seen the incredible squandering of resources that continued even after everyone knew to what disaster it was leading. Maybe he could have done something about it. Certainly he would never have been so stupid as to use pure water to flush high-grade sewage into the sea, thus destroying all three elements: water, recoverable wastes, and ocean environment. Today water was for drinking, sewage for fertilizer, and the sea for fish. Today was civilized. Once he had visited a sea-floor farm and seen the swimming crops, and touched the tentacle of a tame octopus. The huge squid were penned separately, as they could never be trusted, but the octopi could be handled.

  Still, there was room for improvement, and Balook was showing the way. Other worlds could be explored, worlds hostile to man, because the techniques that had fashioned Balook could in due course remake man himself. A strain of human being adapted to cold and low oxygen could colonize Mars; another strain adapted to heat and darkness could settle on Venus, if a way were found to handle the enormous atmospheric pressure there.

  But Balook would help most right here on Earth. Meat was scarce and expensive now, but wonderful meat-producing strains could be developed, not in decades or even in years, but in months—once the bio-computers tackled the problem. People could be fed at a fraction of the present cost per food-pound. Why not a bacon bush or a steak tree, when it came down to it? Or a steak-snake; that sounded better.

  A mosquito stung him on the arm. Thor slapped at it. One thing about the pesticide moratorium: the pests survived. Theoretically biological warfare against the insects kept them under control, but nature was always a jump or two ahead. However, the Balook technique could produce special insectivores, bug eaters supreme.

  He smiled. Bug-eyed monsters—with an eye for bugs.

  Then he realized that his flight of fancy was unrealistic. Insects and arachnids had their place too; they were needed for fertilization of many plants, and as food for birds. He had been too narrow. Perhaps it would be better to develop a kind of human being whose blood made mosquitoes sick. That made him smile; he had a mental picture of a mosquito turning green in the snoot and buzzing anxiously for a basin.

  Maybe there could even be life forms that fed on contaminating radiation, improving the environment further. The prospects seemed endless. But all the local folk seemed to worry about was Balook's size and the "waste" of funds.

  Thor shook his head—and realized that he had just lost Balook's trail. He had been blithely zooming along the bikeway, and had missed the place where Balook turned off. Damn!

  He slowed and turned about, furious with himself. He would have to stop thinking to himself so much. That was a bad habit he had gotten into in the course of his years of semi-isolation from people his own age. If Balook got in trouble in the extra time made by this needless delay—

  The radio buzzed. Thor jumped guiltily. He turned it on. "Right here," he said.

  "Skip, again. We got the poacher. Mean customer! This will clear up a number of unsolved thefts in this neighborhood. Congratulations!"

  "That's great!" Thor said, relieved that Skip hadn't found out about his losing the trail. But how could Skip have learned? It was a pointless concern.

  "Now about Balook. You're way off—"

  Thor gulped audibly.

  "No fault of yours, lad," Skip continued. "He's been sighted thirty-five miles west of the ranch. That's about a two hour start on you, at your rate through the rough. Not as bad as I figured, but bad enough. Can you catch him?"

  Thor spied Balook's trail again, going west, into high brush. Balook was tall enough to step over most of the bushes without flattening them. That meant an almost impenetrable wall of foliage barred Thor's way. No wonder he had missed it!

  "Not a chance," Thor said. "I'll have to carry the bike through this mess, or boost over. Unless I go around. But that would add a lot of mileage."

  "Don't waste your boost!" Skip said, alarmed. "Look, lad—that was a chance sighting. A housewife who thought she was dreaming, but called the police anyway, just in case. They told her the perspective must have made a stray horse seem bigger than it was. Not many outsiders know much about Balook, you know."

  Thor hadn't known. He had assumed that his knowledge was common, and that the criticism of the Project relayed to him was from the general public. He should have known better. He had become insular, locked mainly in the world he shared with Balook. Yet a news blackout could have suppressed even such episodes as the hospital visit, so that only vague rumors circulated. But he hardly cared to discuss that now. "What happened?"

  "They called us. They've been alerted, and warned to stay clear, but you know how snoopy folk get. They aren't going to stay clear long, especially if anybody gets hurt. You've got to get over there now. We're sending a car around to give you a lift."

  "But a car will spook Balook!"

  "Not if it lets you off a mile or two from him. We've got to take that chance, lad! Now you put your signal on and scoot over to the nearest motor vehicle lane, and the car will find you in a few minutes."

  "Okay," Thor said, slightly disturbed at this change in plans. Was Skip subtly letting him know that there was a lack of confidence in his abilities? He found the "Signal" setting on the ring radio and left it on. There was no audible response; there wasn't supposed to be.

  He turned his bike about again and pedaled north. Actually he'd be glad for a rest; he wasn't used to this strenuous and extended effort. A cross-country pursuit was different from a few kilometers on an established bikeway.

  The car was prompt. It rolled up as he intersected the motor lane. It was an automatic electric: no driver.

  He folded the bike and set it in the rear rack, then climbed into the car. The motor whined smoothly as the vehicle accelerated down the lane, achieving a speed no human driver would have trusted.

  Thor hardly had a chance to relax, be
fore the car slowed. Sixty kilometers—in twenty minutes!

  He got out and unfolded the bicycle. The car moved smoothly away. Balook's trail was visible where it crossed the lane. Good enough.

  The land was more open here, and Thor was not familiar with it. It was not easy pedaling, for there were rocks and holes in the ground; a semi-wilderness park. Balook's trail was harder to follow, because there were fewer trees to show damage and the hard terrain hardly showed his imprint. Also, the path was no longer straight, for Balook was now traveling from tree to tree. Not to eat; he was seeking partial shade and concealment, for he liked neither the sunlight nor the open range.

  Again Thor marveled at Balook's imperative. For a primarily nocturnal, forest-shade creature to charge out into unshaded territory by day, with the problem of heat dissipation that brought, and keep going—he had to have some truly compelling reason. But what could it be?

  The animal had to be close, for this was where he had been sighted. Within a couple of kilometers. How far could he have strayed in twenty minutes?

  Confidently Thor went on, traversing the difficult landscape. He felt much refreshed by the brief rest, and by the knowledge that he was now close. The foam metal wheels absorbed much of the constant jarring, and the shock absorbers helped too, but the pedaling was still stiff. At any moment, now, he would spy Balook's hulking body...

  Yet several kilometers passed, with no more direct sign of the quarry. Finally Thor touched his ring. "Skip, are you sure he's here?" he asked when the man answered. "I can't find him."

  "No, I'm not sure," Skip replied worriedly. "We don't know how long it took the woman to report, and there may have been delay in relaying the message. Don't forget Balook's moving right along, too."