by Mike Resnick
He didn’t—and after a few minutes we went back to see what was the matter.
I couldn’t find him. It was like he had vanished off the face of the planet.
They hunted till darkness came on, but they found
Not a button, or feather, or mark,
By which they could tell that they stood on the ground
Where the Baker had met with the Snark.
We spent half an hour looking for Pollard. There was no trace of him, and eventually we were forced to admit that somehow the Snark had turned back on his trail and circled around us or hid and waited for us to pass by. Either way, it was obvious that he’d managed to get Pollard.
I knew it was futile to keep looking for him, so I signaled Chajinka to continue searching for the Snark. We hiked over the rocky canyon floor until at last we came to a steep wall.
“We go up, or we go back,” I said, looking at the wall. “Which will it be?”
He stared at me expectantly, waiting for me to signal him which way to go.
I looked back the way we’d come, then up in the direction of the path we were following—
—and as I looked up, I saw a large object hurtling down toward me!
I pushed Chajinka out of the way and threw myself to my left, rolling as I hit the ground. The object landed five feet away with a bone-jarring thud!—and I saw that it was Pollard’s body.
I looked up, and there was the Snark standing on a ledge, glaring down at me. Our eyes met, and then he turned and began racing up the canyon wall.
“Are you all right?” I asked Chajinka, who was just getting to his feet.
He brushed himself off, then made a digging motion and looked questioningly at me.
We didn’t have any shovels, and it would take hours to dig even a shallow grave in the rocky ground using our hands. If we left Pollard’s body where it was, it would be eaten by scavengers—but if we took the time to bury him, we’d lose the Snark.
“Leave him here to his fate—it is getting so late!”
The Bellman exclaimed in a fright.
“We have lost half the day. Any further delay,
And we sha’n’t catch a Snark before night.”
When we got halfway up the wall, I stopped and looked back. Alien raptors were circling high in the sky. Then the first of them landed next to Pollard and began pulling away bits of his flesh. I turned away and concentrated on the Snark.
It took an hour to reach the top, and then Chajinka spent a few minutes picking up the Snark’s trail again. We followed it for another hour, and the landscape slowly changed, gradually becoming lush and green.
And then something strange happened. The trail suddenly became easy to follow.
Almost too easy.
We tracked him for another half hour. I sensed that he was near, and I was ready to fire at anything that moved. The humidity made my hands sweat so much that I didn’t trust them not to slip on the stock and barrel, so I signaled Chajinka that I wanted to take a brief break.
I took a sip from my canteen. Then, as I leaned against a tree, wiping the moisture from my rifle, I saw a movement half a mile away.
It was him!
I pulled my rifle to my shoulder and took aim—but we were too far away. I leaped to my feet and began running after him. He turned, faced me for just an instant, and vanished into the bush.
When we got to where he’d been, we found that his trail led due north, and we began following it. At one point we stopped so I could remove a stinging insect from inside my boot—and suddenly I caught sight of him again. He roared and disappeared again into the heavy foliage as I raced after him.
It was almost as if the son of a bitch was taunting us, and I wondered: is he leading us into a trap?
And then I had a sudden flash of insight.
Rather than leading us into a trap, was he leading us away from something?
It didn’t make much sense, but somewhere deep in my gut it felt right.
“Stop!” I ordered Chajinka.
He didn’t know the word, but the tone of my voice brought him up short.
I pointed to the south. “This way,” I said.
The Dabih frowned and pointed toward the Snark, saying something in his own tongue.
“I know he’s there,” I said. “But come this way anyway.”
I began walking south. I had taken no more than four or five steps when Chajinka was at my side, jabbering again, and pulling my arm, trying to make me follow the Snark.
“No!” I said harshly. It certainly wasn’t the word, so it must have been the tone. Whatever the reason, he shrugged, looked at me as if I was crazy, and fell into step behind me. He couldn’t very well lead, since there was no trail and he didn’t know where we were going. Neither did I, for that matter, but my every instinct said the Snark didn’t want me going this direction, and that was reason enough to do it.
We’d walked for about fifteen minutes when I heard a hideous roar off to my left. It was the Snark, much closer this time, appearing from a new direction. He showed himself briefly, then raced off.
“I knew it!” I whispered excitedly to Chajinka, who just looked confused when I continued to ignore the Snark.
As we kept moving south, the Snark became bolder and bolder, finally getting within a hundred yards of us, but never showing himself long enough for me to get a shot off.
I could feel Chajinka getting tenser and tenser, and finally, when the Snark roared from thirty yards away, the little Dabih raised his spear above his head and raced after him.
“No!” I cried. “He’ll kill you!”
I tried to grab him, but he was much too quick for me. I followed him into the eight-foot-high grasslike vegetation. It was a damned stupid thing to do: I couldn’t see Chajinka, I couldn’t see the Snark, and I had no room to maneuver or even sidestep if there was a charge. But he was my friend—probably, if I was honest, my only friend—and I couldn’t let him face the Snark alone.
Suddenly I heard the sounds of a scuffle. There was some growling, Chajinka yelled once, and then all was silent.
I went in the direction I thought the sounds had come from, pushing the heavy grasses aside. Then I was making my way through thornbush, and the thorns ripped at my arms and legs. I paid no attention, but kept looking for Chajinka.
I found him in a clearing. He’d put up the fight of his life—his wounds attested to that—but even with his spear he was no match for a 400-pound predator. He recognized me, tried to say something that I wouldn’t have understood anyway, and died just as I reached his side.
I knew I couldn’t stay in the heavy bush with the Snark still around. This was his terrain. So I made my way back to the trail and continued to the south. The Snark roared from cover, but didn’t show himself.
After another quarter mile I came to a huge tree with a hollow trunk. I was about to walk around it when I heard a high-pitched whimpering coming from inside it. I approached it carefully, my rifle ready, the safety off—
—and suddenly the Snark broke out of cover no more than fifteen yards away and charged me with an ear-splitting roar.
He was on me so fast that I didn’t have time to get off a shot. He swiped at me with a mighty paw. I ducked and turned away, but the blow caught me on the shoulder and sent me flying. I landed on my back, scrambled to my feet, and saw him standing maybe ten feet away. My rifle was on the ground right next to him.
He charged again. This time I was ready. I dove beneath his claws, rolled as I hit the ground, got my hands on my weapon, and got off a single shot as he turned to come at me again.
“Got you, you bastard!” I yelled in triumph.
At first I thought I might have hit him too high in the chest to prove fatal, but he collapsed instantly, blood spurting from the wound—and I noticed that he had a festering wound on his side, doubtless from Marx’s shot a week ago. I watched him for a moment, then decided to “pay the insurance,” the minimal cost of a second bullet, to make sure he
didn’t get back up and do any damage before he died. I walked over to stick the muzzle of my rifle in his ear, found that I didn’t have a clear shot, and reached out to nudge his head around with my toe.
I felt something like an electric surge within my head, and suddenly, though I’d never experienced anything remotely like it before, I knew I was in telepathic communication with the dying Snark.
Why did you come to my land to kill me? he asked, more puzzled than angry.
I jumped back, shocked—and lost communication with him. Obviously it could only happen when we were in physical contact. I squatted down and took his paw in my hands, and felt his fear and pain.
Then he was dead, and I stood up and stared down at him, my entire universe turned upside down—because during the brief moment that I had shared his thoughts, I learned what had really happened.
The Snark’s race, sentient but non-technological, was never numerous, and had been wiped out by a virulent disease. Through some fluke, he alone survived it. The others had died decades ago, and he had led a life of terrifying loneliness ever since.
He knew our party was on Dodgson IV the very first day we landed. He was more than willing to share his hunting ground with us, and made no attempt to harm us or scare us off.
He had thought the killing of the crystal-horned buck was a gift of friendship; he didn’t understand that he was stealing Marx’s trophy because the concept of trophies was completely alien to him. He killed Marx only after Marx wounded him.
Even then he was willing to forgive us. Those dead animals we found in my traps were his notion of a peace offering.
He couldn’t believe that we really wanted to kill him, so he decided he would visit the camp and try to communicate with us. When he got there, he mistook the Dabihs’ t-packs for weapons and destroyed them. Then, certain that this would be seen as an act of aggression even though he hadn’t harmed anyone, he left before we woke up.
He came back to try one last time to make peace with us. This time he made no attempt to enter the camp unseen. He marched right in, fully prepared to be questioned and examined by these new races. But what he wasn’t prepared for was being attacked by the Dabihs. Fighting in self-defense, he made short work of them. Mbele raced into the ship, either to hide or to get a weapon. He knew first-hand what Marx’s weapon had done to him at fifty yards, and he didn’t dare let Mbele shoot at him from the safety of the ship, so he raced into it and killed him before he could find a weapon.
After that it was war. He didn’t know why we wanted to kill him, but he no longer doubted that we did…and while there was a time when he would have welcomed an end to his unhappy, solitary existence, he now had a reason, indeed a driving urge, to stay alive at all costs…
…because he wasn’t a he at all; he was an it. The Snark was an asexual animal that reproduced by budding. Its final thought was one of enormous regret, not that it would die, for it understood the cycles of life and death, but that now its offspring would die as well.
I stared down at the Snark’s body, my momentary feeling of triumph replaced by an overwhelming sense of guilt. What I had thought was my triumph had become nothing less than genocide in the space of a few seconds.
I heard the whimpering again, and I walked back to the hollow tree trunk and looked in. There, trembling and shrinking back from me, was a very small, very helpless version of the Snark.
I reached out to it, and it uttered a tiny, high-pitched growl as it huddled against the back of the trunk.
I spoke gently, moved very slowly, and reached out again. This time it stared at my hand for a long moment, and finally, hesitantly, reached out to touch it. The instant we made contact I was able to feel its all-encompassing terror.
Do not be afraid, little one, I said silently. Whatever happens, I will protect you. I owe you that much.
Its fear vanished, for you cannot lie when you are telepathically linked, and a moment later it emerged from its hiding place.
I looked off into the distance. Men would be coming soon. The rescue party would touch down in the next week or two. They’d find Marx’s body in the hold, and they’d exhume the Desmonds and Mbele and the eleven Dabihs. They’d read the Captain’s diary and know that all this carnage was caused by an animal called a Snark.
And since they were a hunting company, they’d immediately outfit a safari to kill the Snark quickly and efficiently. No argument could possibly deter them, not after losing an entire party of Men and Dabihs.
But they would be in for a surprise, because this Snark not only knew the terrain, but knew how Men thought and acted, and was armed with Man’s weapons.
The infant reached out to me and uttered a single word. I tried to repeat it, laughed at how badly I mispronounced it, took the tiny creature in my arms, and went off into the bush to learn a little more about being a Father Snark while there was still time.
In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.
INTRODUCTION TO “THE ELEPHANTS ON NEPTUNE”
Jack McDevitt
Most writers develop an identifiable style which would give us a pretty good idea who the author is without looking at a byline. We can, for example, easily distinguish among stories written by Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, and Robert A. Heinlein. This general principle doesn’t apply to everybody. It certainly doesn’t apply to Mike Resnick, who has never played by the rules.
Mike has given us fiction that will break our heart, that just kids around, that roars along like a runaway freight, that produces a satirical bite that may leave a permanent scar, that casually reminds us of the imperfections of the world we live in.
“The Elephants on Neptune” won’t fit easily into any category I can think of. It is one of a kind. But it does have a bite.
I know where most of my story ideas come from, and how they evolve. Not this one. One day I just sat down, typed the title, had no idea where it was going or even what it was about, and began writing. Obviously it took some rewriting to get it into saleable shape, but even then, and even though some of the humor and some of the philosophy is clearly typical of me, it is one of the strangest stories I’ve ever written. My daughter Laura, also an award-winning writer, read it and asked me if I’d finally started experimenting with drugs. Carol read it and immediately had me stop drinking so much coffee. The wild part is, I decided I really liked that story. So did some of the voters. It was both a Hugo and a Nebula nominee in 2001 for Best Short Story, as well as winning the Homer Award and topping the Asimov’s Readers Poll.
THE ELEPHANTS ON NEPTUNE
THE ELEPHANTS ON NEPTUNE LED an idyllic life.
None ever went hungry or were sick. They had no predators. They never fought a war. There was no prejudice. Their birth rate exactly equaled their death rate. Their skins and bowels were free of parasites.
The herd traveled at a speed that accommodated the youngest and weakest members. No sick or infirm elephant was ever left behind.
They were a remarkable race, the elephants on Neptune. They lived out their lives in peace and tranquility, they never argued among themselves, the old were always gentle with the young. When one was born, the entire herd gathered to celebrate. When one died, the entire herd mourned its passing. There were no animosities, no petty jealousies, no unresolved quarrels.
Only one thing stopped it from being Utopia, and that was the fact that an elephant never forgets.
Not ever.
No matter how hard he tries.
When men finally landed on Neptune in 2473 A.D., the elephants were very apprehensive. Still, they approached the spaceship in a spirit of fellowship and goodwill.
The men were a little apprehensive themselves. Every survey of Neptune told them it was a gas giant, and yet they had landed on solid ground. And if their surveys were wrong, who knew what else might be wrong as
well?
A tall man stepped out onto the frozen surface. Then another. Then a third. By the time they had all emerged, there were almost as many men as elephants.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” said the leader of the men. “You’re elephants!”
“And you’re men,” said the elephants nervously.
“That’s right,” said the men. “We claim this planet in the name of the United Federation of Earth.”
“You’re united now?” asked the elephants, feeling much relieved.
“Well, the survivors are,” said the men.
“Those are ominous-looking weapons you’re carrying,” said the elephants, shifting their feet uncomfortably.
“They go with the uniforms,” said the men. “Not to worry. Why would we want to harm you? There’s always been a deep bond between men and elephants.”
That wasn’t exactly the way the elephants remembered it.
326 B.C.
Alexander the Great met Porus, King of the Punjab of India, in the Battle of the Jhelum River. Porus had the first military elephants Alexander had ever seen. He studied the situation, then sent his men out at night to fire thousands of arrows into extremely sensitive trunks and underbellies. The elephants went mad with pain and began killing the nearest men they could find, which happened to be their keepers and handlers. After his great victory, Alexander slaughtered the surviving elephants so that he would never have to face them in battle.
217 B.C.
The first clash between the two species of elephants. Ptolemy IV took his African elephants against Antiochus the Great’s Indian elephants.
The elephants on Neptune weren’t sure who won the war, but they knew who lost. Not a single elephant on either side survived.
Later that same 217 B.C.
While Ptolemy was battling in Syria, Hannibal took 37 elephants over the Alps to fight the Romans. 14 of them froze to death, but the rest lived just long enough to absorb the enemy’s spear thrusts while Hannibal was winning the Battle of Cannae.