7. Michael Cavendish--2027
Mike was just coming through the clump of trees when the boy began towave at him. He shifted the clumsy old Jeffrey .475, cursing theweight as he quickened his pace. But there was no help for it, he hadto carry the gun himself. None of the boys were big enough.
He wondered what it had been like in the old days, when you could getfullsized bearers. There used to be game all over the place, too, anda white hunter was king.
And what was there left now? Nothing but pygmies, all of them,scurrying around and beating the brush for dibatags and gerenuks. Whenhe was still a boy, Mike had seen the last of the big antelopes go;the last of the wildebeestes and zebra, too. Then the carnivoresfollowed--the lions and the leopards. _Simba_ was dead, and just aswell. These natives would never dare to come out of the villages ifthey knew any lions were left. Most of them had gone to Cape and theother cities anyway; handling cattle was too much of a chore, excepton a government farm. Those cows looked like moving mountainsalongside the average boy.
Of course there were still some of the older generation left; Kikiyuand even a few Watusi. But the free inoculations had begun many yearsago, and the life-cycle moved at an accelerated pace here. Nativesgrew old and died at thirty; they matured at fifteen. Now, with theshortage of game, the elders perished still more swiftly and only theyoung remained outside the cities and the farm projects.
Mike smiled as he waited for the boy to come up to him. He wasn'tsmiling at the boy--he was smiling at himself, for being here. Heought to be in Cape, too, or Kenyarobi. Damned silly, this business ofbeing a white hunter, when there was nothing left to hunt.
But somehow he'd stayed on, since Dad died. There were a fewcompensations. At least here in the forests a man could still moveabout a bit, taste privacy and solitude and the strange, exotictropical fruit called loneliness. Even _that_ was vanishing today.
It was compensation enough, perhaps, for lugging this damned Jeffrey.Mike tried to remember the last time he'd fired it at a living target.A year, two years? Yes, almost two. That gorilla up in Ruwenzoricountry. At least the boys swore it was _ingagi_. He hadn't hit it,anyway. Got away in the darkness. Probably he'd been shooting at ashadow. There were no more gorillas--maybe _they_ had been taking theshots, too. Perhaps they'd all turned into rhesus monkeys.
Mike watched the boy run towards him. It was a good five hundred yardsfrom the river bank, and the short brown legs couldn't move veryswiftly. He wondered what it felt like to be small. One's sense ofproportion must be different. And that, in turn, would affect one'ssense of values. What values applied to the world about you when youwere only three feet high?
Mike wouldn't know. He was a big man--almost five feet seven.
Sometimes Mike reflected on what things might be like if he'd beenborn, say, twenty years later. By that time almost everyone would be aproduct of Leff shots, and he'd be no exception. He might stay withpeople his own age in Kenyarobi without feeling self-conscious,clumsy, conspicuous. Pressed, he had to admit that was part of thereason he preferred to remain out here at Dad's old place now. Hecould tolerate the stares of the natives, but whenever he venturedinto a city he felt awkward under the scrutiny of the young people.The way those teen-agers looked up at him made him feel a monster,rather.
Better to endure the monotony, the emptiness out here. Yes, and waitfor a chance to hunt. Even though, nine times out of ten, it turnedout to be a wild goose-chase. During the past year or so Mike hadhunted nothing but legends and rumors, spent his time stalkingshadows.
Then the villagers had come to him, three days ago, with their wildstory. Even when he heard it, he realized it must be pure fable. Andthe more they insisted, the more they protested, the more he realizedit simply couldn't be.
Still, he'd come. Anything to experience some action, anything tocreate the illusion of purpose, of--
"_Tembo!_" shrieked the boy, excited beyond all pretense of caution."Up ahead, in river. You come quick, you see!"
No. It couldn't be. The government surveys were thorough. The lastrecord of a specimen dated back over a half-dozen years ago. It wasimpossible that any survivors remained. And all during the safarithese past days, not a sign or a print or a spoor.
"_Tembo!_" shrilled the boy. "Come quick!"
Mike cradled the gun and started forward. The other bearers shuffledbehind him, unable to keep pace because of their short legs and--hesuspected--unwilling to do so for fear of what might lie ahead.
Halfway towards the river bank, Mike halted. Now he could hear therumbling, the unmistakable rumbling. And now he could smell the rankmustiness borne on the hot breeze. Well, at least he was down-wind.
The boy behind him trembled, eyes wide. He _had_ seen something, allright. Maybe just a crocodile, though. Still some crocs around. And hedoubted if a young native would know the difference.
Nevertheless, Mike felt a sudden surge of unfamiliar excitement, halfexpectancy and half fear. _Something_ wallowed in the river; somethingthat rumbled and exuded the stench of life.
Now they were approaching the trees bordering the bank. Mike checkedhis gun carefully. Then he advanced until his body was aligned withthe trees. From here he could see and not be seen. He could peer downat the river--or the place where the river had been, during the rainyseason long past. Now it was nothing but a mudwallow under the glaringsun; a huge mudwallow, pitted with deep, circular indentations anddotted with dung.
But in the middle of it stood _tembo_.
_Tembo_ was a mountain, _tembo_ was a black block of breathing basalt._Tembo_ roared and snorted and rolled red eyes.
Mike gasped.
He was a white hunter, but he'd never seen a bull elephant before. Andthis one stood eleven feet at the shoulders if it stood an inch; thebiggest creature walking the face of the earth.
It had risen from the mud, abandoned its wallowing as its trunk curledabout, sensitive to the unfamiliar scent of man. Its ears rose likethe outspread wings of some gigantic jungle bat. Mike could see theflies buzzing around the ragged edges. He stared at the great tusksthat were veined and yellowed and broken--once men had huntedelephants for ivory, he remembered.
But how could they? Even with guns, how had they dared to confront amoving mountain? Mike tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. Thestock slipped through his clammy hands.
"Shoot!" implored the boy beside him. "You shoot, now!"
Mike gazed down. The elephant was aware of him. It turneddeliberately, staring up the bank as it swayed on the four blackpillars of its legs. Mike could see its eyes, set in a mass of grayishwrinkles. The eyes had recognized him.
They knew, he realized. The eyes knew all about him; who he was andwhat he was and what he had come here to do. The eyes had seen manbefore--perhaps long before Mike was born. They understood everything;the gun and the presence and the purpose.
"Shoot!" the boy cried, not bothering to hold his voice down anylonger. For the elephant was moving slowly towards the side of thewallow, moving deliberately to firmer footing, and the boy was afraid.Mike was afraid, too, but he couldn't shoot.
"No," he murmured. "Let him go. I can't kill him."
"You must," the boy said. "You promise. Look--all the meat. Meat fortwo, three villages."
Mike shook his head. "I can't do it," he said. "That isn't meat.That's life. Bigger life than we are. Don't you understand? Oh, thebloody hell with it! Come on."
The boy wasn't listening to him. He was watching the elephant. And nowhe started to tremble.
For the elephant was moving up onto solid ground. It moved slowly,daintily, almost mincing as its legs sampled the surface of the shore.Then it looked up and this time there was no doubt as to the directionof its gaze--it stared intently at Mike and the boy on the bank. Itsears fanned, then flared. Suddenly the elephant raised its trunk andtrumpeted fiercely.
And then, lowering the black battering-ram of its head, the beast cameforward. A deceptively slow lope, a scarcely accelerated trot, andthen all at once it was
moving swiftly, swiftly and surely andinexorably towards them. The angle of the bank was not steep and theelephant's speed never slackened on the slope. Its right shoulderstruck a sapling and the sapling splintered. It was crashing forwardin full charge. Again it trumpeted, trunk extended like a flail ofdoom.
"Shoot!" screamed the boy.
Mike didn't want to shoot. He wanted to run. He wanted to flee themountain, flee the incredible breathing bulk of this grotesque giant.But he was a white hunter, he was a man, and a man is not a beast; aman does not run away from life in any shape or size.
The trunk came up. Mike raised the gun. He heard the monster roar, faraway, and then he heard another sound that must be the gun'sdischarge, and something hit him in the shoulder and knocked him down.Recoil? Yes, because the elephant wasn't there any more; he could hearthe crashing and thrashing down below, over the rim of the river bank.
Mike stood up. He saw the boy running now, running back to the bearershuddled along the edge of the trail.
He rubbed his shoulder, picked up his gun, reloaded. The sounds frombelow had ceased. Slowly, Mike advanced to the lip of the bank andstared down.
The bull elephant had fallen and rolled into the wallow once more. Ithad taken a direct hit, just beneath the right ear, and even as Mikewatched, its trunk writhed feebly like a dying serpent, then fellforward into the mud. The gigantic ears twitched, then flickered andflopped, and the huge body rolled and settled.
Suddenly Mike began to cry.
Damn it, he hadn't _wanted_ to shoot. If the elephant hadn't chargedlike that--
But the elephant _had_ to charge. Just as he _had_ to shoot. That wasthe whole secret. The secret of life. And the secret of death, too.
Mike turned away, facing the east. Kenyarobi was east, and he'd begoing there now. Nothing to hold him here in the forests any longer.He wouldn't even wait for the big feast. To hell with elephant-meat,anyway. His hunting days were over.
Mike walked slowly up the trail to the waiting boys.
And behind him, in the wallow, the flies settled down on the lifelesscarcass of the last elephant in the world.