Boris Strugatsky - Noon - 22nd Century

“We!” exclaimed Tanya. “Good grief, go put away the intravisor.”

“Well, okay,” said Komov. “What do we do now? It’s hot here, and with a carcass like this next to the camp…”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Mboga. “Drag the tents twenty paces or so down the street. I’ll make all the measurements, look it over, and then annihilate it.”

“How?” asked Tanya.

“With a disintegrator. I have a disintegrator. And you, Tanya, get away from here. I am now going to embark on some very unappetizing work.”

They heard footsteps, and Ryu jumped out from behind the tent with a large automatic pistol. “What happened?” he asked, panting.

“We killed one of your hippopotamuses,” Fokin explained pompously.

Ryu quickly looked everyone over and immediately relaxed. He stuck his pistol in his belt. “Did it charge?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” Komov answered confusedly. “If you ask me, it was simply out for a stroll, but we have to stop it.”

Ryu looked at the overturned helicopter and nodded.

“Can’t we eat it?” Fokin shouted from the tent.

Mboga said slowly, “It looks like somebody has already tried eating it.”

Komov and Ryu went over to him. With his fingers, Mboga was feeling broad, deep, straight scars on the loin parts of the animal. “Powerful fangs did that,” said Mboga. “Ones sharp as knives. Someone took off slices of five or six kilos each with one swipe.”

“Some sort of horror,” Ryu said very sincerely.

A strange, prolonged cry sounded high in the sky. Everyone looked up.

“There they are!” said Ryu.

Large light-gray birds like eagles rushed headlong down on the city. One behind another, they dropped from an enormous altitude. Just over the humans’ heads they spread broad, soft wings and darted upward just as violently, pouring waves of warm air over the humans. They were enormous birds, larger than terrestrial condors or even the flying dragons of Pandora.

“Meat eaters!” Ryu said excitedly. He started to draw the pistol from his belt, but Mboga seized him firmly by the arm.

The birds rushed over the city and off into the violet evening sky to the west. When the last of them had disappeared, the same disturbing prolonged cry sounded.

“I was ready to fire,” Ryu said with relief.

“I know,” said Mboga. “But it seemed to me—” He stopped.

“Yes,” said Komov. “It seemed that way to me too.”

Upon consideration, Komov ordered the tents to be moved not merely twenty paces, but onto the flat roof of one of the buildings. The buildings were low—only seven feet or so high—so it was not difficult to climb on top of them. Tanya and Fokin put the packs with the most valuable instruments on the roof of the next building over. The helicopter was not damaged. Komov took it up and landed it neatly on the roof of a third building.

Mboga spent the whole night under the floodlights, examining the monster’s carcass. Then at dawn the street filled with a shrill hissing sound, a large cloud of white steam flew up over the city, and a short-lived orange glow flashed out. Fokin, who had never before seen an organic disintegrator at work, dashed out of a tent wearing only shorts, but all he saw was Mboga, who was unhurriedly cleaning a flood light, and an enormous cloud of fine gray dust over blackened grass. All that remained of the honey monster was its ugly head, expertly prepared, coated with transparent plastic, and destined for the Capetown Museum of Exozoology.

Fokin wished Mboga a good morning and was about to go back into the tent and finish his sleep, when he ran into Komov.

“Where are you going?” Komov inquired.

“To get dressed, of course,” Fokin replied with dignity. The morning was fresh and clear, except for scattered white clouds which floated unmoving in the violet sky to the south. Komov jumped down onto the grass and set off to fix breakfast. He planned on fixing fried eggs, but he couldn’t find the butter.

“Boris,” he called, “where’s the butter?”

Fokin was standing on the roof in a strange pose—he was doing Yoga exercises.

“I have no idea,” he said haughtily.

“You did the cooking yesterday evening.”

“Uh… yes. So the butter is where it was last evening.”

“And where was it last evening?” Komov asked with restraint.

Fokin, with a displeased look, disengaged his head from under his right knee. “How should I know?” he said. “We restacked all the boxes afterward.”

Komov sighed, and started patiently examining box after box. There was no butter. Then he went over to the building and dragged Fokin down by a leg. “Where’s the butter?” he asked.

Fokin had just opened his mouth to reply when Tanya came around the corner, wearing a sleeveless blouse and shorts. Her hair was wet.

“Morning, boys,” she said.

“Morning, Tanya my sweet,” said Fokin. “You haven’t by any chance seen the box of butter?”

“Where have you been?” Komov asked fiercely.

“Swimming,” said Tanya.

“What do you mean you’ve been swimming?” said Komov. “Who gave you permission?”

Tanya unfastened from her belt an electric hacker in a plastic sheath, and threw it onto the boxes. “Gennady, old dear,” she said, “there aren’t any crocodiles here. The water is wonderful and the bottom is grassy.”

“You haven’t seen the butter?” Komov asked.

“No, I haven’t—but has anybody seen my shoes?”

“I have,” said Fonin. “They’re on the other roof.”

“No, they’re not.”

All three turned around and looked at the roof. The shoes were gone. Komov looked at Mboga. He was lying on the grass in the shade, sleeping soundly, with his small fists under his cheek.

“Come now!” said Tanya. “What would he do with my shoes?”

“Or the butter,” added Fokin.

“Perhaps they were in his way,” muttered Komov. “Well, all right. I’ll cook something without butter.”

“And without shoes.”

“All right, all right,” said Komov. “Go work on the intravisor. You too, Tanya. Try to get it put together as soon as possible.”

Ryu came to breakfast. Before him he herded a large black machine on six hemomechanical legs. The machine left behind it a broad swath through the grass, stretching all the way back to the base. Ryu scrambled up to the roof and sat at the table, while the machine stopped in the middle of the street below.

“Tell me, Ryu,” said Komov. “Did anything ever get lost on you back at the base?”

“Like what?” asked Ryu.

“Well, say you leave something outside overnight, and you can’t find it in the morning.”

“Not that I know of.” Ryu shrugged. “Sometimes little things get lost—bits of rubbish, pieces of wire, scraps of lithoplast. But I think my cybers pick up that sort of trash. They’re very economical little comrades, and they can find a use for anything.”

“Could they find a use for my shoes?” asked Tanya.

Ryu laughed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I hardly think so.”

“And could they find a use for a box of butter?” asked Fokin.

Ryu stopped laughing. “You’ve lost your butter?” he asked.

“And a pair of shoes.”

“No,” said Ryu. “The cybers don’t go into the city.”

Deftly as a lizard, Mboga climbed onto the roof. “Good morning,” he said. “I’m late.”

Tanya poured him his coffee. Mboga always breakfasted on one cup of coffee.

“So, we’ve been robbed,” he said, smiling.

“Meaning it wasn’t you?” asked Fokin.

“No, it wasn’t me. But last night the birds we saw yesterday flew over the city twice.”

“And so much for the shoes,” said Fokin. “Somewhere I—”