* * * *
Biological science has made such startling breakthroughs in recent years that government legislators are now trying to impose brakes on research until questions of morality and individual rights can be thoroughly debated. But research can’t be halted forever, and if some discoveries alter the basic patterns of society then we’ll simply have to learn to live differently. For instance, if a means is found to confer near-immortality on people who are treated at a young age, that will change the way tomorrow’s youths regard life.
But perhaps it will force even greater changes in those people who are too old for the treatments.
“Hunting,” a quietly told story that brings large questions into focus in the life of one man, was Michael Cassutt’s first sale. He’s sold several stories since, and once you’ve read this one you’ll look forward to the others to come.
* * * *
HUNTING
Michael Cassutt
He left California on a suborbital flight before dawn. Tom had made the reservation for him—Sara was too busy, for once—otherwise he might have been traveling at a saner time of day. At his age he had no liking for early hours, and no need of haste. But once airborne he began to enjoy the feeling of isolation, floating alone and untouched above the white world. It was an excellent place in which to brood. Fifty minutes later he was in Minneapolis, almost regretting the quickness of the flight. A robot shuttle waited to fly him to the lodge.
Now, three hours later, he had his fill of silent, frozen desolation. He no longer felt forced into the vacation; he decided he would enjoy it. He wanted to get out in the cold snow and walk. He wanted to hunt.
The shuttle’s control panel beeped and a recorded voice said, “Please secure for landing, Mr. Seabury. We are approaching the lodge.” Somewhere up front, Seabury knew, the computer’s transponder had locked onto the lodge signal. He looked out but saw only the rough carpet of pines flowing past beneath him. Occasionally he glimpsed the ribbon of the lodge road—except for that, this might have been an ancient wilderness, as untouched as it had been four centuries ago.
He leaned back in his seat, the middle of three forward ones. His bags rested in the rear three instead of in the luggage compartment. It had seemed silly to bother with it when he had all this room inside. A couple of months ago, in mid-October, the shuttle would have been carrying five more passengers, five other rich, jaded businessmen out for a week of roughing it in the woods. But this was the off-season.
The shuttle dropped lower and began to hover. Seabury could see the lodge. It sat in a cluster of trees that hugged a low hill. It was a misshapen thing, what had probably once been a single large rectangular building with additions built on over many years by different people. The roof of the largest addition was flattened into a helipad, and the shuttle dropped toward it. For a brief moment Seabury thought the shuttle was going to overshoot, but he laughed: a man spends thirty-five years in a business and still doesn’t trust what he makes. The shuttle bumped lightly and settled. “Welcome to the lodge, Mr. Seabury,” the taped voice said.
A bearded young man ran up to the vehicle as Seabury opened the door. A light breeze sifted the loose snow that lay on the helipad. The air was warmer than Seabury had expected it to be. “Mr. Seabury?” the boy asked.
“Yes.”
The boy extended his hand. “Hi; I’m Kevin Russell. Let’s get this stuff inside.” He reached into the back seats and pulled out the bags.
* * * *
The interior of the lodge was modern rustic. It had no elevator. Seabury and Kevin walked down wide wooden stairs. Logs were used as railings, and the walls were rough boards—yet the place was warm and brightly lit.
A stout, balding man a few years younger than Seabury stood sorting file cards at the front desk. “David Seabury? I’m Ted Russell,” he said. “Welcome to the lodge. We’re very happy to have you here, sir. It’s our slow season.”
“My pleasure,” Seabury said. “I hope it’ll be a nice change of pace for me.”
“I think it will be. Let’s see. . . .” Russell punched keys on a tiny cathoderay terminal behind the desk. “Your reservation is confirmed. We’re giving you our best room—with a view to the west. It’s very nice.”
“Thank you.”
“I guess that’s it for the moment. If you need anything, I’ll be around. Or ask Kevin. We’re a little shorthanded this time of year.”
“I understand. I doubt I’ll need much. When can I get outside? It’s still early—”
Russell smiled. “Kevin will help you pick out your gear. Through that door, once you’re settled upstairs.”
* * * *
They walked along the top of a ridge, and below them lay a sea of trees with a few small islands of white. The trees were a dead brown, except for the pines, and the snow was packed and wet—stale. It hadn’t seemed like that from the air. Seabury slapped his hands together. He had been out all afternoon. He was cold, and his breathing was starting to quicken. “Kevin!” he called.
The young man ahead of him stopped and shifted the pack he carried. “Yes, Mr. Seabury?”
“Let’s rest a bit.”
“Fine with me.” The boy unshouldered the pack, set it down, and leaned it against a tree. Seabury merely stood, one hand hiding in a pocket, the other hooking a thumb in the sling of the rifle on his back.
“You think we’re going to find anything today?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Kevin said. “With the early snow this year, the herd may have headed for different territory—or it may be hungry and careless. If they’re hungry, well find something. Can’t say more than that. See, if you’d chosen to do this the modern way we’d have had the herd spotted and tagged for you. All you’d have to do is walk out here to the right spot and pick your shot. You’d have a decent weapon instead of that old clunker.” He looked out toward a small field nearby below them. “Well, the snow should help tracking.”
Seabury nodded and fumbled in his pocket for the heater. He could afford to be patient, for a while. “It’s not much of a challenge, is it? Hunting the new way?”
Kevin spat. “I have no idea.” He got up and moved out to the edge of the ridge. “You ever been up this way before, Mr. Seabury?” he asked, hands on hips and back facing the older man.
“I grew up in this part of the country. I was born across the river a ways, in Minnesota, but my folks moved here when I was just a baby.”
“Then this is nothing new for you.”
“On the contrary: I don’t think I ever went hunting in all the years I lived here. My father was no hunter—he hated guns. I just never got the . . . habit, I’m afraid. I did do a little shooting now and then—and, of course, later, in the Army.” He had come out to where Kevin was standing. “But I never went hunting.”
“That’s funny—” Kevin said. He looked at Seabury and laughed. He wasn’t much more than nineteen, Seabury guessed, in spite of the full beard and the long hair. He looked much younger when he laughed, but with the beard—who could tell? Tom had a beard like that, and Tom was older than nineteen. “I can’t see how a person could live around here and not go out at least once.”
“There were more people around here then; lots of people I knew didn’t hunt. There was no pressure to—in fact, it had fallen a bit into disfavor when I was about your age. The deer population was in trouble then. Most animal populations were, in the last century.”
“Back in the good old days?” Kevin asked, with a bare touch of sarcasm.
“Yes, the good old days,” Seabury replied quickly. “But then, I’m prejudiced.” He clapped Kevin on the shoulder and turned away from the ridge.
Kevin hunched forward, down on his knees, watching silently. “Want to see something?” he whispered.
“What is it?”
“Sssh. Come here.”
Seabury crawled back. Kevin pointed. “Out there, in the clearing.” He followed the boy’s hand where it pointed across the clearing
below. Three deer stood cautiously at the edge of the snow-covered meadow. Two females and one buck—handsome, lean, proud-looking animals. They sniffed and looked, then one by one flew across the clearing and were gone.
“Beautiful,” Seabury said.
“Part of our indigenous deer population, Mr. Seabury. That’s what you’re hunting.”
“Are we going after them?”
“No,” Kevin said. “They’ll be too far away by the time we can work our way down there, and it’s too late to start a long chase. Tomorrow. We better be getting back.”
* * * *
Ted Russell was working behind the front desk when Seabury came down from upstairs. “Evening, Mr. Seabury.”
“Good evening, Mr. Russell.”
Russell looked up from the paper he was writing on. It was covered with names and numbers in neat rows, all of them inscribed in a fine hand that could have passed for printing. “My boy tells me you managed to spot three beauties this afternoon.”
“Yes. I guess we were pretty lucky.”
Russell grunted. “I’ll say. You get anything this time of year, you’re lucky. Of course, Kevin’s my best guide— been at it since he could walk—but even so: three of them. Stars must be in your favor. This really isn’t the season.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Dinner’ll be ready pretty quick. It’s programmed and just waiting for someone to punch buttons. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go do just that.” He stood up.
“Certainly.” Russell went out and Seabury was left standing alone at the desk. A fire cracked and popped in the stone fireplace across the room. He moved over to it, thinking of Sara and Tom out in California. They would probably be enjoying an early dinner. The sun would just be going down, casting a red glow over the sea and the hills below the house. Sara would be as she had been for years, as she always would be: the impeccably dressed red-haired beauty, quiet and laughing gently now and then at something Tom had said. And then there was Tom: with his young good looks and his leering and his . . . concern. Seabury wondered if they would be talking about him. Were they worried? Of course, Sara was. That was one thing he had always loved her for: she did not forget. There was always a reminder from her—a letter or a call when he was away, a gift or a hello at just the right time. Of all her virtues, that was the one that caused him to continue to forgive.
That made him feel guilty. Forgive what? Forgive her for being a child of her times? He had no right to complain. Tom was more than he had a right to get in a co-husband. It was supposed to be reassuring to know that his business and his marriage could go on without him, momentarily or permanently. They told him, someone somewhere had told him, that the most basic stable form is the triangle. He tried to believe that, but he viewed love as a sort of mutual possession. And to know that the one person he wanted did not want only him—
“Mr. Seabury?” Kevin was in the doorway to the dining room. “Dinner’s ready.”
“I’ll be in in a moment.” He put his hands out to the fire. He felt very tired.
* * * *
“Kevin, your father tells me you’re taking up, what is it, history?”
The boy nodded. “Yeah, I used to read so much of it when I was younger that I just got hooked. I took some TV courses last year. Maybe next year I’ll go down to Madison and see what I can pick up there. I don’t know. I’m in no hurry.”
“No need to be, at your age.” They ate dinner in the lodge dining room, a large place that with all its empty tables should have seemed barnlike, the warmth and the quiet made it seem almost cozy. The room had a large window that looked out from a balcony toward the road which wound away into the trees. Dinner was brought in discreetly by an old-fashioned cart—semiconscious, Seabury thought, and having to be carefully programmed down to the last action/decision. It was a reliable old piece of machinery, though.
“See, Mr. Seabury,” Russell said, “this time of year none of the help is around. I’ve got three more full-time guides, and a few part-time ones. During the season all of us eat here together. The hunters sort of like that—it’s old-fashioned, frontier-style “
“Do you still get many hunters here?”
Russell stared at his plate. “That’s a tricky question. Up until the last year, why, I would have said yes without a doubt. But with this new Methuselah treatment, I can’t say. Most of my hunters are in the young set, a little older than Kevin. Now most of them won’t want to take time off from their series—more of them won’t want to risk a gun accident when they can look forward to, well, a couple of hundred years. The older ones’ll come back, I hope. I’ll have to see.”
Seabury noticed for the first time that Kevin wasn’t eating what he and Russell were. “Kevin? You’re taking the treatments;”
“Yeah,” the boy said, “I’m taking them.”
“How far along are you?”
“A little over halfway.”
“Another year to go?”
The boy nodded. “Once a week. The day after tomorrow I go into town.”
Seabury laughed. “Excuse me if I show my ignorance. The process never really interested me—since I was unable to take part in it myself.” Tom had been interested, though. He was able.
“Well, I don’t know much about it,” Kevin said. “I just go down there, get some injections once a week, and watch what I eat. It’s not so much—”
“—for the promise of ‘eternal life’?”
“They don’t promise that,” the older Russell said.
“No, of course not.”
They finished eating. The cart rolled in, asked in a halting, high-pitched voice if anyone wished anything else, then rolled out again with the dishes. Seabury stood up. “Well, I must be getting to bed. The fresh air tired me. Kevin? Early tomorrow.”
“Fine, Mr. Seabury.”
“I’ll see you then. Good night.” He went out and upstairs to his bedroom, wondering when Sara would call.
* * * *
“Here we go,” Kevin said, kneeling in the snow. “Tracks.”
“Do you think they’re from the ones we saw yesterday?” Seabury asked.
Kevin stood up and followed the tracks for a few meters to where they began to head up into the trees. “I think so. There are three sets, and they’re well spaced. Those beauties must have been in a hurry. Let’s see where they’re hurrying to.”
Seabury didn’t reply, but fell in behind the boy. It was late morning. They had been outside since before sunrise—hours ago, but with the day warming nicely Seabury felt as if he could go all day. He hefted the rifle and hurried to catch up with Kevin.
They followed the tracks through a mixture of brush and trees, working their way slowly up into the hills. Kevin moved quickly, stepping lightly over fallen branches. He would stop occasionally, to kneel and check the tracks—and to wait for Seabury. Seabury found himself hurrying. Once he misstepped and went sprawling on his face in the snow. He picked himself up, panting, and brushed snow off the rifle. Kevin was waiting not far ahead.
“Like to rest a little?” the boy asked.
“No, no. Let’s keep going.”
“Well, I’d like to stop for a minute, okay?”
“If you want to.”
“I want to. I don’t think we’re going to have too much luck today anyway.”
Seabury unslung his rifle. “Why not? The tracks seem fresh to me.” They were standing on the crest of a small hill, and the tracks—three pairs of them—wound clearly down the far slope.
Kevin pointed down the hill. “Sure they’re fresh and clear now—and they may be for quite a ways yet. But it’s warming up; the snow’s melting. Besides, down in that valley—well, we just won’t be able to follow these tracks much farther. I’ve been through here enough times to know that.”
“If the snow’s melting we should hurry.”
Kevin took off a glove and brushed at his beard. “What is your goddamned hurry? You want a nice fourteen-point buck to take home, y
ou should have come up earlier, in the fall. If you’re out for the exercise, that’s one thing. Relax and enjoy it. I’ve never seen anyone so itchy to kill a stupid animal. Going to mount the rack in your beach house or something?”
“I don’t really care if it’s a buck or not. I’ll settle for any deer.”
“Well, they’ll still be here next year. I told you, it’s just too late.”
“I know,” Seabury said. “When I was your age, this would have been out of season. It’s just—I’ve never killed anything larger than an insect. An animal. I’ve always wondered . . . how it felt.”
Kevin stared at him, then began laughing. “I thought I’d heard most of the justifications for hunting, but that’s a new one. Just want to see a little blood and twitching, eh? I’ll let you gut it, if you want. I’ve got a knife.”
Universe 8 - [Anthology] Page 18