by Mike Resnick
“You make it sound like murder, with all this talk of killing and premeditation,” I said. “All that happened is that someone destroyed public property.”
“There has to be a reason, David. You don’t risk your life against a rhino just for the hell of it.” He paused. “I know that rhinos used to be abundant, and they were poached to near-extinction, primarily for their horns. But I need to know more. Does the horn represent some religious object? Is this some kind of ritual passage to adulthood, like when our elmoran were expected to kill a lion with a spear? Maybe the killer is just a nut case, but if there’s any valid reason for his actions, it’ll make it a lot easier to track him down if we understand it. Anyone can find out what we did to the rhinos; what I need to know is why. What was so special about a rhinoceros horn that people all but destroyed an entire species, and risked jail time to do it?”
“I’ll see what I can find out,” I said. “Are you sure your client is innocent?”
“Dead certain,” he replied. “Hell, the police know he didn’t do it. They just felt they had to arrest someone.”
“I’ve got one last question.”
“What is it?”
“Moses ole Kaelo hasn’t had two shillings to rub together in years. How do you expect him to pay you?”
“You explain to me about rhinoceros killers and I’ll explain to you about pro bono legal work,” he said, signing off.
I toyed with going back to sleep, but I was too wide awake now, not from the coffee but from Joshua’s notion that there might actually be a reason why someone would slaughter a rhinoceros and remove its horns.
I sat down at my computer and tried to order my thoughts. Since I wasn’t as sharp as usual, I decided to use voice commands rather than the more exacting keystrokes.
“Computer, activate,” I said.
Activated, it replied.
“Tie into all files in my office computer that are not sealed or protected by passwords.”
Working…done.
“When did the last rhinoceros die?”
Working…The last African black rhinoceros died in 2067 A.D. The last African white rhinoceros died in 2061 A.D. The last Indian rhinoceros died in 2055 A.D. The last Sumatran rhinoceros—
“That’s enough,” I said. “Now I want you to check back through all African court records and see if anyone was ever arrested for killing a rhinoceros.”
Working…13,671 people were arrested for poaching rhinoceri. The number of poached rhinoceri was between 861,000 and 864,000 during the 20th century, and 1,342 more since then.
“Why the discrepancy in 20th century numbers?” I asked.
It is due to the fact that up to 3,000 rhinoceri died from causes other than poaching and later had their horns removed by opportunistic men and women who chanced upon their corpses.
“Had any of those 13,671 people removed the rhinos’ horns?”
13,494 of the people arrested for killing rhinoceri were charged with removing the horns.
“Computer, what was the reason for killing so many rhinos?”
To gain possession of the horns.
No surprise there. “And what was the reason for gaining possession of the horns?”
Profit.
“Who would pay for a rhino horn?”
In China, doctors prescribed powdered rhinoceros horn as a powerful aphrodisiac. In North African countries, the horn of the rhinoceros was used as the hilt of a dagger.
“What was a rhinoceros horn worth in Kenya shillings?”
Insufficient data. Since the value of both the horn and the shilling fluctuated, I must be given a time frame.
“All right. What was the value in 1980?”
From 22,000 to 30,000 Kenya shillings, depending upon the size and quality of the horn.
“And the shilling was worth how much?”
The rate of exchange in 1980 was 4.23 Kenya shillings to the British pound.
“What was the per capita income of the Kenyan citizen, regardless of tribe, in 1980?”
2,491.28 shillings per annum.
I was silent for a moment while I did the math in my head. No wonder they had killed almost a million rhinos! A dead rhino was worth an average of more than ten times what most Kenyans could earn in a year!
“Computer,” I said at last, “is there a market for rhino horns today?”
The market is extremely limited because the horns are almost unattainable, but such rarities would clearly fetch prices well in excess of those that were obtained during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Adjusting for inflation, a minimum price would be 625,000 shillings, probably far more if interested parties were allowed to bid against each other.
I contacted Joshua on the vidphone and told him what I had learned. He seemed unimpressed.
“I knew most of that, and surmised the rest,” he said. “That’s very disappointing news, David.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“No one’s making ceremonial knives any more,” he said. “As for the horn being an aphrodisiac when it was ground up and sprinkled over your food or drink, I had my computer analyze it. You could get the same effect grinding up your fingernails and sprinkling them in your drink, which is to say: none at all.” He grimaced. “That means it’s strictly a collector’s item from an extinct animal that’s been cloned—and that means that every damned animal in the park is at risk. Hell, lions and leopards and impala have been extinct every bit as long as the rhino. A collector who wants a rhino horn simply because of its rarity may be just as interested in a hippo tooth, or a lion’s mane, or a kudu horn—and there are probably a lot of collectors. If we don’t put a stop to this right now, the poacher will strike again. After all, it’s easy money, and it’s huge money. And when word gets out, and it always does, we’ll have more poachers.”
“Could Moses have done it?”
“Not a chance,” answered Joshua. “They found him on this side of the force field. Hell, Moses couldn’t cross that field without killing himself on those rare occasions that he’s sober. He certainly couldn’t have done it tonight. As for shooting a dart accurately in the dark…”
“All right,” I said. “Then it’s an easy case and you’ll get him off.”
“I’m not concerned with case, damn it!” he half-yelled. “I’m concerned with catching the poacher and making sure it doesn’t happen again so our game parks aren’t overrun by them!”
He broke the transmission.
I thought of going back to bed, but now I was awake and alert, and it occurred to me that my job wasn’t done yet. I knew how rhinos had been poached to the brink of extinction in the late 20th century—but the fact was that they had survived another fifty years. How?
“Computer?” I said.
Activated.
“What was the rhinoceros population of Kenya in 1950?”
103,625 black and 17 white.
“In 1970?”
72,133 black and 9 white.
“In 1990?”
428 black and no white.
Well, it was obvious when most of the poaching had been done.
“In 2010?”
1,238 black and 28 white.
So the black rhino, which seemed headed for immediate extinction in 1990, had tripled its number in the next twenty years. I asked the computer to explain this. It couldn’t, so I got dressed and went to my office, activated my more powerful computer, and accessed files from Earth that were unavailable to my personal computer.
The answer was surprising yet, when I thought about it, inevitable. A few private sanctuaries and farms—Solio Ranch, Lewa Downs, a handful of others—had decided that the rhinos could not be saved in the national parks, so they began raising rhinos themselves.
And why didn’t the same poachers kill them there?
That was the surprise.
The farms hired the very best protection money could buy—and that meant former poachers. They were given weapons, uniforms, salaries, living quar
ters, and respect, and it was this handful of reformed poachers who ensured the survival of the rhinoceros in Kenya for another half century, until the farms were finally sold to developers and the last bit of rhino habitat was lost.
Creating a solution to the embryonic problem on Kilimanjaro would take some innovation. As far as I knew we had only one poacher, and once we identified him we were certainly going to jail him, not hire him to stop other poachers from plying their trade.
But that didn’t mean that we didn’t have the makings of an anti-poaching squad. There were a lot of young men out on the pastoralists’ land. Surely some of them must be bored with their lives. Others must be having difficulty putting together the bride price for the woman they wanted to wed. Some might just be looking for, if not excitement, then at least a change in their lives, one that didn’t involve moving to one of the cities.
I called for an appointment with William Blumlein the next day, and he made room in his schedule for me just before lunch.
“Good morning, William,” I said as I was ushered into his office.
He sat behind his desk, looking very comfortable in a short-sleeved shirt and lightweight tan slacks.
“Hello, David,” he said, rising and shaking my hand. “What can your government do for you today?”
“We have a problem,” I said.
He arched an eyebrow sardonically. “In Utopia? Maybe I should have refused this job.”
“I’m serious, William.”
“Okay, tell me about it. I hope you don’t mind if we capture it to holo. I do this with all my meetings. It saves my having to repeat everything to whatever department I turn it over to.”
I filled him in on the situation. Before I could suggest my solution, he interrupted me.
“We’re going to have to protect the parks,” he said. “I know we’ve got force fields, but clearly someone has learned how to get past them, and if he isn’t apprehended soon there’s no reason to assume he won’t pass the word to potential confederates. The way I see it, we’re going to need park rangers, or game wardens, or whatever the hell we decide to call them..”
“I fully agree, sir,” I said.
“Ideally, based on your research, we should go through our jail, approach each poacher, and offer to commute their sentences if they’ll come to work for us. But we don’t have any poachers in jail. So,” he concluded, “what do you suggest?”
“We should hire the young men from the manyattas,” I suggested. “I can’t see hiring the city dwellers.”
He shook his head. “It’ll never work, David. They’ve never seen a wild animal in their lives. They would have no idea how to poach a rhino, so they will have no idea how to stop a poacher. Also, their currency is cattle, and I’m not equipped to pay them in cattle.”
“Then are you just going to wait until he strikes again and hope you get lucky?” I asked rather angrily, annoyed that he had found so many holes in my solution so easily.
“You nominated me for this job, David. You should have a little more confidence in me.”
“All right,” I said. “What do you plan to do?”
“I can’t hire poachers, because we only have one and we haven’t caught him yet,” answered Blumlein. “And since I can’t hire anyone who knows how to poach rhinos, I’ll have to hire people who can breach a force field.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Prisoners,” he said. “I’ll commute the sentence of any prisoner in our jails who can prove to me that he can get through the force field.”
“Are you crazy?” I snapped. “You’re encouraging them all to become poachers! They’re already criminals!”
“It won’t be that simple, David,” he said calmly. “Any prisoner who accepts my offer must agree to have a tracer chip inserted in his body so we will always know exactly where he is. I think we’ll eventually do the same for all the larger animals in the parks, but first comes the anti-poaching squad. We can’t hire the expertise that they hired at those ranches in Kenya, but we’ll have people who know exactly how poachers breach the force fields, they’ll be armed, and we’ll be able to trace their movements every minute of the day. It’s a start, at least.”
“I hope so,” I said dubiously.
“I’ll tell you something else,” Blumlein continued. “We’ll catch the poacher, and soon. Given what the horn is worth, only one man on Kilimanjaro will suddenly have that kind of money. If he deposits it here, we’ll know instantly. If he deposits it on Earth, I’ll ask the banks there to report it. They won’t even have to be Kenyan banks; he can’t start an account anywhere on Earth without showing them his Kilimanjaro passport.”
“I hadn’t considered that,” I said.
“No reason why you should,” he replied. “You’re neither a policeman nor a politician.”
“We should have him incarcerated in no time.”
“You haven’t been paying attention to your own arguments,” said Blumlein with a laugh. “Whoever he is, we’ll reach an accommodation with him, and because of his skills he’ll become the leader of our anti-poaching team. Just because we capture him doesn’t mean collectors will stop offering huge prices for trophies, and that kind of offer always gets a response.”
And sure enough, three days later we caught the poacher when he tried to put the money in a safe box under the watchful eye of the bank’s security holo camera. Just out of curiosity I went to visit him in his cell. He was a young pastoralist, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, named Katoo ole Porola. That sounded familiar, and finally it clicked.
“You’re Mawenzi ole Porola’s brother!” I said.
He nodded his head unhappily. “There is this girl, Kaelo. I have loved her all my life, and soon I would be able to pay the bride price. But old Simon ole Kipoli’s youngest wife died last week, and he has offered to pay the bride price now. She told her father than she will not marry Simon ole Kipoli, that she wants to marry me. But her father grew angry, and threatened to send her back to his brother on Earth for disobeying him. Kaelo and I decided to run away to the city of the il-makesen, which is my clan, because women who live in the cities can choose whom they want. But I have no money, and I needed to get some before her father sent her to Earth.”
“What gave you the idea of killing the rhino?” I asked.
“My own father speaks of collectors with contempt. I contacted Herbert ole Basinole, whose family moved to the city last year, and he found a collector on Earth. He did this as a friend, and took no money or cattle for his efforts. He just wanted to help Kaelo and me before her father sent her away.” He paused, trying to hold back his tears. “I have brought shame on my family, and now I have lost her forever.”
“Perhaps not,” I said.
He looked at me questioningly.
“Before long someone will come by to speak to you about the future. Unless I miss my guess, you’ll be given a chance to redeem yourself. If I were you, I’d agree to their terms.”
His face lit up at that.
The next day Herbert ole Basinole received a stern lecture and a tour of the prison from Blumlein himself, and we were assured that there would be no repeat of his efforts as a go-between.
Two weeks later, with a newly-implanted chip, a uniform, a salary, and a title, Katoo ole Parola became Kilimanjaro’s first anti-poaching warden. Shortly thereafter the two young lovers were married. Blumlein decreed that no bride price was due, but Katoo insisted that five shillings be taken out of his pay every week for a year and sent to Kaelo’s father.
Young Katoo proved to be good at his job. Too good. You wouldn’t think that a young man performing his job well would bring about the greatest change in our history—but it did.
8
A NEW DAWN ON
KILIMANJARO (2241-2243 A.D.)
A year passed without another poaching incident. I considered that a success, and in a way it was. But it also presented us with an unanticipated problem.
When
I returned to the office one day after a leisurely lunchtime drive through the nearer of the two game parks, I found a message waiting for me. I activated the computer, and William Blumlein’s holo popped into existence.
“Hello, David,” he said. “We find ourselves in a bit of a problem here, and I’d very much like your input. I’ve also invited Joshua. He’ll stop by your office after lunch to pick you up and drive you over.”
I spent the next twenty minutes trying to figure out what the problem might be. Then Joshua showed up, and we drove to the Council building. An attendant—I hesitate to call him a guard, though he was armed with a laser pistol—was waiting for us, and ushered us into Blumlein’s office.
“I’m glad you could both make it,” he said. “We have a policy problem that I need to discuss with you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to discuss them with the Council of Elders?” I asked.
“Eventually I will,” he said. “But both of you were involved at the outset of this one, so I want your opinions.” He waited until we were seated, and then continued. “I’m sure you know that Katoo ole Porola’s anti-poaching squads have been a success.”
“I know,” I said, frowning. “But how can that be a problem? The alternative was to do nothing and lose our animals to poachers.”
“I agree,” said Joshua.
“I’d have thought everyone would agree,” said Blumlein. “And you know something interesting? We’d both be wrong.”
“I don’t understand,” said Joshua.
“Then let me enlighten you. Now that unscrupulous collectors know there are animals up here, we have to patrol the parks around the clock. That means three shifts per day per park. And to monitor the force field, and place some men inside the parks should anyone get past the outer perimeter, we need at least seven, and preferably eight, men on each shift. Each man requires weapons and various technical devices to spot any breaches in the force field.”
He paused and looked at us. “Gentlemen, that’s forty salaries and expenses we didn’t have a year ago. And since we don’t charge the populace for using the parks, they don’t bring in a single shilling to help defray expenses. A sizeable minority of the city dwellers feel that we should do away with the parks, turn the land over to the pastoralists who always want more land anyway, and find better uses for the money we have been spending on Katoo’s squad.”