THE BOUNTY HUNTER

Originally published in Fantastic Universe, March 1958.

There was a whirring noise and a flurry and part of the snow-bank shot up at a 45-degree angle—or so it seemed—and vanished in the soft gray sky. Orel stopped and put out his arm, blocking his uncle’s way.

“It’s a bird…only a bird…get on, now, Orel,” Councillor Garth said, testily. He gave his nephew a light shove. “They turn white in the winter-time. Or their feathers do. Anyway, that’s what Trapper says.”

They plodded ahead, Orel, partly distracted by the pleasure of seeing his breath, laughed a bit. “A bird outside of a cage…” The councillor let him get a few feet ahead, then he awkwardly compressed a handful of snow and tossed it at his nephew’s face when he turned it back. The first startled cry gave way to laughter. And so they came to the trapper’s door.

The old fellow peered at them, but it was only a thing he did because it was expected of him; there was nothing wrong with his eyes. Garth had known him for many years, and he was still not sure how many of his mannerisms were real, how many put on. Or for that matter, how much of the antique stuff cluttering up the cabin was actually part of the trapper’s life, and how much only there for show. Not that he cared: the trapper’s job was as much to be quaint and amusing as to do anything else.

Orel, even before the introductions were over, noticed the cup and saucer on the top shelf of the cabinet, but not till his two elders paused did he comment, “Look, Uncle: earthenware!”

“You’ve got a sharp eye, young fellow,” the trapper said, approvingly. “Yes, it’s real pottery. Brought over by my who-knows-how-many-times-removed grandfather from the home planet… Yes, my family, they were pretty important people on the home planet,” he added, inconsequentially. He stood silent for a moment, warmed with pride, then made a series of amiable noises in his throat.

“Well, I’m glad to meet you, young fellow. Knew your uncle before he was councillor, before you were born.” He went to the tiny window, touched the defroster, looked out. “Yes, your machine is safe enough.” He turned around. “I’ll get the fire started, if there’s no objections? And put some meat on to grill? Hm?”

The councillor nodded with slow satisfaction; Orel grinned widely.

* * * *

The trapper turned off the heating unit and set the fire going. The three men gazed into the flames. The meat turned slowly on the jack. Orel tried to analyze the unfamiliar smells crowding around him—the wood itself, and the fire: no, fire had no smell, it was smoke; the meat, the furs and hides…he couldn’t even imagine what they all were. It was different from the cities, that was sure. He turned to ask something, but his uncle Garth and Trapper weren’t attending. Then he heard it—a long, drawn-out, faraway sort of noise. Then the trapper grunted and spit in the fire.

“What was it?” Orel asked.

The old fellow smiled. “Never heard it before? Not even recorded, in a nature studies course? That’s one of the big varmints—the kind your uncle and the other big sportsmen come out here to hunt—in season—the kind I trap in any season.” Abruptly, he turned to Councillor Garth. “No talk of their dropping the bounty, is there?” Smilingly, the councillor shook his head. Reassured, the trapper turned his attention to the meat, poked it with a long-pronged fork.

Orel compared the interior of the cabin to pictures and 3-D plays he had observed. Things looked familiar, but less—smooth, if that was the word. There was more disorder, an absence of symmetry. Hides and pelts—not too well cured, if the smell was evidence—were scattered all around, not neatly tacked up or laid in neat heaps. Traps and parts of traps sat where the old man had evidently last worked at mending them.

“Council’s not in session, I take it?” the trapper asked. Orel’s uncle shook his head. “But—don’t tell me school’s out, too? Thought they learned right through the winter.”

Garth said, “I was able to persuade the Dean that our little trip was a genuine—if small—field expedition, and that Orel’s absence wouldn’t break the pattern of learning.”

The trapper grunted. Pattern! Orel thought. The mention of the word annoyed him. Everything was part of a pattern: Pattern of learning, pattern of earning, pattern of pleasure… Life in the city went by patterns, deviations were few; people didn’t even want to break the patterns. They were afraid to.

But it was obvious that the trapper didn’t live by patterns. This…disorder.

“Do you have any children, Trapper?” he asked. The old man said he didn’t. “Then who will carry on your work?”

The trapper waved his hand to the west. “Fellow in the next valley has two sons. When I get too old—a long time from now,” he said, defiantly, “one of them will move in with me. Help me out. Split the bounties with me.

“I was married once.” He gazed into the fire. “City woman. She couldn’t get used to it out here. The solitude. The dangers. So we moved to the cities. I never got used to that. Got to get up at a certain time. Got to do everything a certain way. Everything has to be put in its place, neatly. All the people would look at you otherwise. Breaking the patterns? They didn’t like it. Well, she died. And I moved back here as fast as I could get permission. And here I’ve stayed.”

He took down plates, forks, knives, carved the meat. They ate with relish.

“Tastes better than something out of a factory lab, doesn’t it?”

Orel’s mind at once supplied him with an answer: that synthetics were seven times more nutritious than the foods they imitated. But his mouth was full and besides, it did taste better. Much better… After the meal there was a sort of lull. The trapper looked at Councillor Garth in an expectant sort of way. The councillor smiled. He reached over into the pocket of his hunting jacket and took out a flask. Orel, as he smelled it (even before: after all, everyone knew that the bounty-hunters drank—the flask was part of every 3-D play about them), framed a polite refusal. But none was offered him.

* * * *

“The purpose of this two-man field expedition,” his uncle said, after wiping his mouth, “is to prepare a term paper for Orel’s school showing how, in the disciplined present, the bounty-hunters maintain the free and rugged traditions of the past, on the Home Planet…let me have another go at the flask, Trapper.”

Orel watched, somewhat disturbed. Surely his uncle knew how unhealthy…

“My family, they were pretty important people back on the Home Planet.” The Old Trapper, having had another drink, began to repeat himself. Outside—the dusk had begun to set in—that wild, rather frightening, sound came again. The old man put the flask down. “Coming nearer,” he said, as if to himself. He got to his feet, took up his weapon. “I won’t be gone long…they don’t generally come so near…but it’s been a hard winter. This one sounds kind of hungry. But don’t you be frightened, young fellow,” he said to Orel, from the door. “There’s no chance of its eating me.”

“Uncle…” Orel said, after a while. The councillor looked up. “Don’t be offended, but…does it ever strike you that we lead rather useless lives in the city—compared, I mean, to him?”

The councillor smiled. “Oh, come now. Next you’ll be wanting to run away and join the fun. Because that’s all it is, really: fun. These beasts—the big ‘varmints,’ as he calls them—are no menace to us any longer. Haven’t been since we switched from meat to synthetics. So it’s not a truly useful life the old man leads. It’s only our traditional reluctance to admit things have changed which keeps us paying the bounty…” He got up and walked a few steps, stretched.

“We could get rid of these creatures once and for all, do it in one season’s campaign. Drop poisoned bait every acre through the whole range. Wipe them out.”

Orel, puzzled, asked why they didn’t.

“And I’ll tell you something else—but don’t put it in your report. The old fellow, like all the trappers, sometimes cheats. He often releases females and cubs. He takes no chance of having his valley trapped out. ‘Why don’t we?’ you ask—why don’t we get rid of the beasts once and for all, instead of paying bounties year after year? Well, the present cost is small. And as for getting an appropriation for an all-out campaign—who’d vote for it? I wouldn’t.

“No more hunting—no more 3-D plays about the exciting life in the wild country—no more trappers—why, it would just about take what spirit is left away from us. And we are dispirited enough—tired enough—as it is.”

Orel frowned. “But why are we like that? We weren’t always. A tired people could never have moved here from the Home Planet, could never have conquered this one. Why are we so—so played out?”

The councillor shrugged. “Do you realize what a tremendous effort it was to move such a mass of people such a distance? The further effort required to subdue a wild, new world? The terrible cost of the struggle against colonialism—and finally, the Civil Wars? We don’t even like to think about it—we create our myths instead out of the life out here in the wilds—and all the time, we retreated farther and farther, back into our cities. We are tired. We’ve spent our energies, we’ve mortgaged them, in fact. We eat synthetics because it’s easier, not because it’s healthier.”

* * * *

A gust of cold wind blew in on them. They whirled around. The Old Trapper came in, dragging his kill by the forelimbs. He closed the door. The two city folk came up close. The beast was a huge male, gaunt from the poor hunting which winter meant to the wild creatures.

“See here—” the trapper pointed out. “Lost two toes there. Old wound. Must’ve gnawed his way out of a trap one time. There—got these scars battling over a mate, I suppose. This here’s a burn. Bad one. When was the last big forest fire we had?—one too big to outrun—” He figured with moving lips. “That long ago? How the time does pass… Let me have that knife there, young fellow—” Orel glanced around, located the knife, handed it to him; gazed down in fascination and revulsion. The wild life did not seem so attractive at this moment.

“Watch close, now, and I’ll show you how to skin and dress a big varmint,” the Old Trapper said. He made the initial incision. “Dangerous creatures, but when you know their habits as well as I do… Can’t expect to wipe them out altogether—” He looked at the two guests. Orel wondered how much he knew or guessed of what had been said in his absence. “No. Keep their numbers down, is all you can expect to do.” He tugged, grunted. “I earn my bounty, I can tell you.” He turned the creature on its back.

Orel struck by something, turned to the councillor.

“You know, Uncle, if this beast were cleaned up and shaved and”—he laughed at the droll fancy—”and dressed in clothes, it—”

Councillor Garth finished the sentence for him. “Would bear a faint, quaint resemblance to us? Hm, yes…in a way…of course, but their external ears and their having only five digits on each—” He clicked his tongue and stepped aside. The Old Trapper, who didn’t care how much blood he got on things or people, worked away, but the Councillor took his nephew closer to the fire to finish what he had to say.