efforts at population control only operated in a puny area, and would have little effect in the whole environmental setting. His job was a joke. His life was a joke, a cosmic joke, a waste of food and air.
He careened away from exactitude to sloppiness. He stopped going outside for bird counts, and just sent in made up reports, filed from bed. He stopped shaving. Sometimes he didn't go to the bother of eating. The only activity he still did well was the daily Foundational Values lesson, but he was only parroting now, only doing what was required.
Leo Talent knocked on Ott's door and was invited in. He looked like he wasn't sure he should sit down.
"Sit," Ott said.
Leo sat. "You don't want to hear this, boss," he said.
"Tell me anyway."
"I don't know where to start."
"Probably doesn't matter much."
"All rightee, then. The cattle are still running wild, and we have a partial explanation. We found the herder's body downriver a ways."
"Expersoned?"
"I don't think so. Not sure. Skinny, but not starved. It looks like she got mauled by wolves or a bear or something, several days before she died. The wounds were nasty, but partially healed."
Ott took a few seconds to take that in. Officially, he wasn't responsible for government serfs in his region, but "officially" didn't cut it at times like this. He thought he understood Leo's look now. The man was probably feeling they'd all flunked some very basic manhood test, having a woman get killed by wild animals just next door. Probably the man was right. That she'd taken several days to die made it worse.
"I have a team burying her," Leo said. "We found a spot out of sight, and they'll put rocks on top, so it won't look so much like a gravesite, and also to discourage the wolves from trying to dig her up. I hope that's all right? That we're burying her?"
"Yeah. Thanks," Ott said. There were risks to having men working above ground in one place for an extended length of time, but sometimes you had to declare the risks worthwhile. It's the call he'd have made, had he been there.
"Boss?"
"Yeah?"
"The birdwatcher guy is acting weird. He's stopped shaving, and, I don't know, he doesn't look right in the head."
"You think it's related?"
"I don't know what to think. We'd been wondering if there'd been contact between the two lately, but we're not a hundred percent sure on that."
"Any clues yet from transmissions, on why a new herder hasn't been sent out?"
"Not a bit of it. Unless they're decommissioning the post, I don't have even a possible explanation."
"They might do that. I've heard rumbles that the present Glorious Leader thinks it would be a good idea to force everyone to live in urban areas. How he expects to eat if he cuts off ranching and farming is beyond me, but there it is. I'm sure he assumes 'Science' will fix it."
"On the upside, sir, if they just give up on this herd, if it can just hang on for another three or four years, we have a good chance of having a sustainable wild herd, I figure. That's if the wolves don't eat all the baby bulls before they grow up into big bulls. Chancy, that."
"Too bad we don't have big bulls to turn loose in the meantime. But we don't."
Leo looked like he got an idea all of a sudden. He shifted in his chair.
"Boss?"
Ott felt wary all of a sudden.
"What, Leo?"
"I'm overdue for a leave. I realize this might be a bad time, and so I'm willing to keep putting it off, but, uhm, let me know when I can have a couple or three weeks, will you?"
Ott wondered, briefly, if it was a bad idea or a good idea to send a man off when he was feeling like he'd flunked a manhood test. He assessed Leo, who was looking even more restless than usual. Leo wasn't a man naturally adaptable to being caged up, which is one reason he got sent on topside missions a lot; otherwise, he went a little nuts.
He ran through his head who else he had on hand to do the sorts of things Leo usually did. Right now, actually, the roster was pretty solid. He looked up Leo's file. The man had 51 vacation days built up. He'd been offered leave several times, but had always felt too much in the middle of a project to leave. He was supposed to let them know when he felt he could take a break. And, tah dah, here he was, saying he felt ready for a break.
"Ah, get out of here. Anything up to a month, give or take. Play it by ear if you like. Have fun," Ott said.
Leo grinned. "Bakertun all right with you, sir?" he asked.
Ott checked his reports, to see if anything up to the northwest had been declared off limits that he might have forgotten about. Nothing had. "Bakertun's fine with me," he said.
"You can reach me through my cousins up there," Leo said.
He left looking like a scientist about to start a new experiment. Ott wondered about that, but not quite enough to run the man down and ask him about it. Finally getting a workaholic to take a break felt almost like a coup of some sort. There was no sense giving the man an opening to change his mind.
Renzo managed to pull himself outside to stand at a respectful distance when the supply copter came. He even put on his best grateful-but-not-too-grateful face for the occasion.
The pilots, after their first glance at his gaunt, pale, bearded frame, pretended he wasn't there. They unloaded supplies more quickly than usual, and flew off. Renzo had the sinking feeling that he'd been written off. He half expected his Informer to inform him, any second now, that he'd been declared an experson. He didn't like that idea. Not in the least. Expersons were not allowed to eat, or drink, and so they died in a matter of two or three tortuous weeks. It wasn't fair. He was being the best government worker he knew how to be, given the circumstances. Still, of course, the government knew best. There were other Pac-Nors, all lined up to take his place. What mattered was that the work got done as it should be done, and Order be maintained. If individual units had to be disciplined by Noble Demise, that was just something that had to be, at this stage of evolution. The Future would be glorious, but for now –
A group of topknotted quail chuckled their way into view, walking in comedic half-order, rushing forward, stopping, milling around, rushing forward again. Noticing Renzo, they exploded into noisy flight. Renzo shot into the flock. There wasn't much left of the little bird he hit, after he'd hit it, but there was enough for a high protein snack. He hadn't thought about that when he fired. He'd just been shooting something out of frustration. But now he fingered his rifle and let quarter thoughts become half thoughts, and join to other half thoughts.
He went to his cabin and gathered food from the pantry. He carried it down to the dugout (which he persisted in calling a cave, not knowing what else to call it). He went across the river to the herder's hut, took all the food from there that he could carry, and headed back to the dugout. On further consideration, he thought it might be good not to have everything in one place. He thought the haystacks might be useful for hiding things, so he went there. Trying to find a good spot, away from where the helicopters usually came in, he found Julia's hidey hole. He wasn't sure what it was at first, but when he looked in and saw the cozy bed, it hit him, hard, what it was. He couldn't bear looking at it. At the same time, he could barely stand the idea of leaving. A sense of urgency, of danger, of helicopters possibly showing up at any moment, finally spurred him to action. He tossed the food in, and went back to the herder's hut for more food and supplies to cart off to the cave. After everything was stashed away there to his near satisfaction – it was impossible to feel he could make the situation safe – he went back to his cabin, dressed and cooked the quail, and ate it, all the while pondering how else he might set it up to survive long enough to figure out a better, longer term course of action, should the government mistakenly declare him an experson.
He assessed his ammo stores. With the recent resupply, they weren't too bad. He took about half down to the cave – this time carefully walking by a new route, so he wouldn't wear a trail – then returned to his cabin, to rearrange
what was left so it looked like more.