IGMS Issue 14

by IGMS

  The warden paused and took a sip of water. "Just remember that while you're out there hunting a bear, they'll be out there hunting you."

  He smiled grimly and added, "Many, myself included, feel that the hunts are the only reason that our two cultures haven't gone to war. We manage to burn off our aggressions here."

  "Now part of maintaining the peace is how we deal with kills." The warden held up a sheet of paper. "You all signed a copy of this, and I hope you read it. This is the agreement on how any bodies will be handled."

  There was a sudden scrabbling by the new hunters as they looked for their copies of the agreement. The older hunters just looked bored.

  Bertram gave the new people a moment to find their papers and then continued. "If you make a kill, you are entitled to take one and only one of the bear's claws as your trophy. You will then activate the homing beacon that he will be carrying. This will let us send a transport out to bring the body back here to be returned to his family. You are required to wait with the body and then return on the transport to register your kill."

  Bertram's voice became stern. "Don't screw up on this. Leave a body out there, or take more than a claw, and the bear's clan is likely to call for the Ma'ak Koberk or Clan Right on you." He looked around at suddenly worried faces. "And what that means is that by treaty, any member of their clan gets to hunt you down anywhere, up to and including Earth."

  The warden smiled again. "Now I get to tell you what happens if a bear kills you. He'll take one of your little fingers as his trophy. Then he'll activate your beacon to have you picked up and returned home. Fair, isn't it?"

  "Now as to sections closed to hunting." Bertram pointed to another map. "This is the lodge area. As you can see, the lodge is divided into three parts: The human side, the bears' side, and the common areas. Stay out of the bears' side of the boundary. They'll stay out of ours.

  There is no hunting allowed anywhere within the lodge's perimeter, and it's well marked. So if anyone does shoot a bear inside the grounds, the court is not going to believe that he didn't know he was in the safety zone."

  Another new one raised a hand. "What's the penalty for shooting a bear inside the area?"

  Bertram grinned. "The offender is dropped in the middle of the hunting area buck naked, shaved bald, and every bear on the planet hunts him down." He thought a moment and then commented, "It's pretty much the same if a bear kills a human out of bounds. The only difference is that all of you get to carry your weapons."

  Bertram looked over the crowd and smiled coldly. "You ought to know that of the four humans and two bears accused of violating the no-hunting area, only two weren't convicted and hunted down. They killed each other, you see. And we all agreed that there wasn't any point in trying two corpses."

  Bertram finished up his lecture by opening two cabinets standing next to each other. Inside the first, a stuffed and mounted ursoid stood clad in a fluorescent yellow coverall. The second held a human in a coverall that was a subdued purple.

  "Okay," said Bertram. "You're going to see bears wearing this yellow uniform tomorrow. They're game wardens. You're also going to see humans, including me, in the purple outfit. The bears see this color the same way as you do the yellow, and it's worn for the same reason."

  Bertram looked grim as he stated loudly, "The penalty for killing a game warden is possibly even worse than killing inside the lodge area." He paused to look the hunters over. "The wardens are the judges, juries, and sometimes the executioners in these cases. We have a fragile peace with the bears. We will have a full partnership with them someday. We will not have that ruined because someone saw an easy kill."

  Then he closed the cabinets and smiled. "See you all in the bar before supper. First drink is on the house."

  There were other wardens mingling with the crowd in the bar that evening. Unlike Bertram and Berak, they were unknown to the hunters. The wardens used their anonymity to listen to the conversations around them, trying to identify possible problems.

  Bertram manned the bar, drawing beers and mixing drinks. Berak played waiter for the bears, carrying a table-sized platter full of the handled buckets of beer. All was going well until an argument broke out at one table.

  "Why should they be allowed weapons?" A young bear pounded the table to emphasize his point. "If they hunted as we do, we'd wipe them out like the vermin they are."

  His friends tried to get him to lower his voice as Berak approached, but the warden came straight to their table. He looked the loud bear over and then said to the other three, "You'd best rein your friend in. If he keeps drinking, I won't certify him as fit for the hunt tomorrow."

  The bear under discussion lurched to his feet and stood there swaying as he sneered at Berak. "Big bad warden. Big bad crippled warden. You really think you can stop me from going out tomorrow?"

  Several other ursoid wardens slipped closer as Berak pushed the unsteady drunk back into his chair. The big warden held him there with one large paw and snarled as he raised the other with claws extended.

  "That's my crippled arm holding you down, cub. I can take out your throat with my good side before you can even move. You still want to try me?"

  The bear sat there shaking his head. Berak snarled again and stepped back. He scanned the gathered crowd and said, "There are two reasons that wardens are chosen from hunters who have been injured here. First, we're a walking example of what can happen to you outside the safety zone. Second, by meeting with hunters of the opposite race and managing to walk -- or crawl -- away, we've learned to respect each other and can work together. Learn from us, or learn outthere."

  Bertram stood behind the bar nodding. There was always one who was trouble. Another warden gave him a signal while coming up to the bar for a refill.

  "That table over there," the other muttered in a low voice. "The one in the corner. From the way those two are talking, I think they're Earth First fanatics."

  Bertram looked the pair over and asked, "What makes you think so?"

  "Not much. Except they keep talking about how the animals should have been wiped out when we first met them."

  Bertram waved his relief in to take over the bar. "That's enough for me to run a secondary check on them before they get out into the field."

  He was back a half hour later. "Good call, Phil," he told the other warden. "Their records didn't check out, so I tossed their belongings and found their real identification."

  "Earth First?"

  "Both of them. Known and on record as real problems. Want to help me put them away?"

  Phil drained his beer and said, "Since I'm done drinking for the night, and seeing how Earth First members are banned from Eden, why not?"

  A quick wave brought two other wardens over to join them. As soon as they were filled in on the situation, they finished their drinks and all four approached the two men sitting in the corner.

  Bertram looked down at the defiant pair and said, "All right, you two. Whatever you have planned for tomorrow is off. You're both in custody now and will be held until the first transport arrives tomorrow. Then your sorry asses are going to be put on board and shipped off planet."

  One of the men started to reach under his jacket, but stopped as Phil produced a heavy caliber pistol. Bertram reached into the man's coat and pulled out a small needle gun.

  "No good for bears, stupid. This would only make them mad."

  "It's good for race traitors," the man muttered as the wardens searched him and his partner.

  A few other wardens had wandered over to see what was going on, and cheerfully decided to help escort the prisoners out. Bertram took the three pistols and two knives that the men had carried and locked them up behind the bar.

  "Strip them down and put them in red coveralls before you put them in their cells," he ordered Phil and the other wardens. Then he turned to the prisoners.

  "In case you don't know, the bears see the color red the same way we do. If you're seen outside your cells, any warden or hunte
r has the right to shoot you down or rip you up on the spot. We've never had one of your ilk escape custody and live."

  The men slumped in defeat and were led away by the grinning wardens. Berak joined Bertram at the bar.

  "Okay, hairless ape. What kind of problem did you have?"

  "Earth Firsters that Phil spotted. They'll be in red in a few minutes. You want to let your people know?"

  The bear grinned, showing five centimeter fangs. "Consider it done. Hunters too?"

  "Sure. I plan to inform my hunters." A sudden thought hit the human warden and he asked, "You don't suppose that young hotshot that you dealt with could be Den of the Claw, do you?"

  "Sacred Caves, I hope not. That would be all we need to have both the Firsters and the Den here at the same time." Berak looked over at the young bear and said thoughtfully, "I think I'll do a little checking on him."

  The ursoid ambled off and Bertram went back to polishing the bar and thinking. The Den of the Claw was the bear equivalent of Earth First. Both groups believed that their own race should be the dominant one, and both were willing to use any means, including starting a war, to ensure that dominance. If members of the groups met face to face at the lodge, Eden could quickly become hell.

  He left the bar and went to Berak's lieutenant. "Ferl, could you let Berak know that I'm running secondary backgrounds on the other new humans. He might want to do the same for your people."

  Ferl growled assent and went looking for his chief. Bertram went back to the bar and rang the bell hanging there. "Last call for drinks," he called. "The season starts at sunup."

  Security didn't have anything negative on the other humans, but Bertram still felt uneasy. The survival instincts that had served him so well as a hunter kept telling him that there was more trouble coming. So he called Berak a little later.

  "What's the word, rug?"

  "Nothing," his counterpart replied. "Even that young idiot has no known connection with the Den. That doesn't mean that he, or someone else with him, isn't connected."

  Bertram sighed, "It's the same on my end. Maybe I'm just getting old and paranoid."

  Berak's booming laugh came back. "It's because we both are a little paranoid that we have managed to grow old. Let us remain so, and we may prevent any problems."

  From your mouth to God's ears, thought Bertram, as he cut the connection.

  The sound of a shot woke Bertram before dawn. He found himself in a crouch beside his bed and holding the pistol he kept under his pillow. His console was screaming an alert and he staggered over to hit the accept button.

  Phil's voice came over the speaker. "The shot came from the bears' side and I can't raise Ferl on the radio."

  "Stay at the boundary," Bertram ordered. "I'll contact Berak and be there in a minute."

  The chief wardens reached the low yellow and purple striped barrier at the same time. Other wardens came pounding up behind them in the dark. Lights were going on in the hunters' quarters, so Bertram and Berak each sent a team to keep the visitors inside.

  "Any idea where Ferl would be?" Bertram asked Phil.

  "We were doing a perimeter sweep and were supposed to meet here when we were done." The younger warden pointed and said, "He should have been coming from that direction."

  Bertram turned to Berak. "Permission to enter your area?" he asked.

  "Granted. For you and the others as long as necessary," Berak grunted. "I have a bad feeling in my gut about this."

  Bertram shared the feeling when the combined group of wardens found Ferl. The bear's yellow uniform was stained with blood from the fist-sized hole in his back.

  Phil was kneeling beside the body and looking at the wound. He pulled a caliper out and held it against the hole.

  ".90 caliber with an hyper expanding round," he decided and then sighed. "It's a human weapon, boss."

  Bertram nodded in agreement. There was no way that he would attempt to second guess his assistant. Before being injured on a hunt and becoming a warden, Phil had been one of the top forensic investigators on Earth.

  His opinion created more problems. A .90 caliber rifle and hyper expansion rounds were not approved equipment for Eden. Any hunter caught with them would face expulsion and fines at the very least. Using them on Ferl made the situation premeditated murder. And since the murder was done by a human, the whole mess was now Bertram's to deal with.

  Bertram turned to the human wardens and said, "Check everyone's equipment. And don't just look for a ninety. Inspect each rifle to see if it's been fired." He pointed at two men. "Harry, you and Tom start checking outside the safe zone with sniffers. Whoever did this might have the rifle and the ammo stashed in the woods. Yesterday, people!"

  Bertram caught Phil's arm. "Hang on. I want you with me when I check out those Earth First maniacs' gear." He looked over at Berak. "Want to come along?"

  The bear assigned two of his team to remove Ferl's body and then fell in behind the humans. "This could be very bad, my friends," he rumbled. "To have a warden murdered is bad enough, but Ferl has family with very powerful connections."

  "How powerful would those connections be?" was Bertram's question.

  Berak looked at the sky in the direction of his home world. Then shook himself and answered, "Ferl's uncle sits on the council. He is also known for having leanings toward the Den of the Claw's beliefs."

  "Wonderful. Then we'd better find the killer in record time."

  Hunting roars from the bears' area, followed by a very human scream, turned the three wardens around. They reached the edge of the woods to find two bears standing over the remains of a pair of humans in red coveralls.

  One of the bodies had his hand on a rifle. A spare magazine for the rifle was sticking out of the coverall's pocket. Phil knelt down to get a closer look.

  ".90 caliber Renquist Expando brand," he said. "Any bets that the magazine in the rifle isn't loaded with them too?"

  One of the two bears was the young hunter that Berak had confronted only a few hours before. The warden loomed over the smaller bear and said, "Explain."

  The other bristled, but kept his voice respectful. "We saw these humans running through the woods. And since they are marked as criminals, we hunted them within the law."

  "And how did you two get out of your quarters?" Bertram interrupted.

  The bear looked at the human warden and turned his back, ignoring the question. Berak grabbed the smaller bear and spun him around. "Answer his question," he snarled.

  "We were already outside when the shot was fired. We saw there was trouble and thought we shouldn't be seen. We were waiting for the wardens at the doors to leave so that we could get back inside." The bear paused for breath and then continued. "We were standing in the trees when the two humans came past us. We saw they had a weapon, so we jumped on them from behind."

  Neither warden was satisfied with the explanation. It seemed too easy. But since the pair might well be telling the truth, Berak sent them back to their quarters and assigned a warden to make sure that they stayed there.

  In the meantime, Bertram had Phil begin an examination of the bodies. "Make sure that they are those two Firsters. Berak and I will be at the cell, trying to figure out how they escaped."

  There were no signs of a forced exit, or any forced entry at the cells. Bertram shook his head.

  "We know that they were locked in here. They couldn't have escaped on their own."

  "So they had an accomplice," rumbled Berak.

  "Right. Let's see what the counter shows." Bertram opened a concealed panel on the other side of the room. "I reset the counters yesterday before the transports started coming in. The cell door should have only been opened twice; once when the Firsters were put in, and again right now."

  He stepped aside so that Berak could see. The counter showed the door as having been opened three times, all from outside the cell, and all with the proper passcode.

  "So one of my men let them out," Bertram grated.

  Berak
was peering at the touchpad by the cell door. "Not necessarily. Look here."

  There were marks on the touchpad that hadn't been there the night before. Berak pointed with a claw and said, "It looks like someone used a code cracker to fool the lock into thinking it had received the correct code."

  "Which, while it relieves my mind about my wardens, puts us right back where we were before."

  "Then I hate to tell you that there's more," said Phil as he walked in at the end of the conversation. "Neither one of those Earth Firsters, and it was them by the way, had fired any kind of a weapon. I tested for propellant residue on what was left of their skins and couldn't find any."

  "So who did the shooting," Bertram wondered aloud.

  Dawn finally came, and with it the return of the two wardens that had been sent out to sweep the area looking for the rifle. Bertram apologized for having forgotten to recall them when the rifle was found. The two men just grinned and Harry said, "Don't be too sorry, boss. We didn't find a rifle, but we did find this."

  This was a large clamp with a pivoting lever that looked like an oversized trigger, and a finger-sized protrusion coming off the side of the lever. Bertram turned the device over and over in his hands trying to make sense of it.

  Berak peered over his shoulder. "I think I know what it may be," said the bear. "Where is the rifle?"

  Phil said, "Here it is." He handed the covered weapon to Berak. "If you need to take it out of the plastic, go ahead. I've gotten all I can out of it."

  Berak tore the wrapping off and looked closely at the rifle. He pointed at marks pressed into the stock and said, "These appear to match the clamp, do they not?"

  The others nodded and Berak held up the rifle and tried to fit one of his massive fingers into the trigger guard. When he failed, he took the clamp and fit it on the weapon, slipping the protrusion inside the guard.