Дэймон Найт - Orbit 8

“Not the carcass. Just the skin. We have knives. Think of the price it will fetch—the sensation!”

I dived for his gun. I was almost crying with rage and horror.

“You’re bloody well not going to kill it. It may be the last tiger in the world. What would be the use of it dead?”

He caught me in the midriff with the butt of the gun, and I fell heavily, gasping for breath.

“So what?” he said. “Who lost the camera, for that matter? And who do you think would ever believe we’d seen a tiger, without proof?” He began to push his way into the undergrowth, ignoring the thorns that tore his trousers and hands.

As a sociologist, Mayson should have known about the territorial instinct which mankind once shared with the rest of creation. I, as a biologist, certainly did. I had by now noticed that the tiger was a female, and pregnant. I knew that a breeding female was the most dangerous and unpredictable of all wild animals. Alarmed or provoked, that lovely, placid creature could change, in a moment, into a spitting tornado. Also, there was likely to be a male somewhere nearby. Mayson was in deadly danger. I collected my gun and followed him, plucking frantically at his shirt. “Come back, you damned fool! You’ll get yourself killed.”

The tigress, aroused by our noisy approach, now stood up, glaring at Mayson. Her ears lay flat, her back was arched, and a ferocious snarl distorted her beautiful face. Mayson had never fired a gun. The closeness of the range was no guarantee that he wouldn’t miss. It might even cause him to fire too late. I was equally inexperienced, but obviously I was about to learn fast.

Still oblivious to his danger, Mayson took aim. The tigress crouched, gathering herself for the spring. I had about two seconds. Either that glorious creature and her precious progeny were going to be destroyed for the sake of a bedraggled skin, inexpertly hacked from her warm body, or Mayson, my fellow human, was going to die a very sticky death.

There was no time for sentimentality. No civilized man could dare to take the risk. I raised my gun and fired, a split second before the tigress could leap, like a darting golden flame, at Mayson. There was a snarl, a flurry of limbs, and the sound of the gunshot sent every living thing diving for cover. I stood there, in the sinister, unnatural silence, and saw that I had not missed.

I left Mayson in the clearing we had made, with both the guns, the remainder of the food, and most of the kit I wanted never to see him again.

I’ll wrap this report in a plastic bag and leave it somewhere. But no one will come for it. Phillips is in no hurry to have us on his bunk roll again.

My second notebook is nearly full of drawings—of tiger cubs.

...the name “Weather Bureau” continued to be used, although the organization itself was somewhat changed in form. Thus the Weather Congress consisted of three arms. First was the political arm, the Weather Council. Second was the scientific arm, the Weather Advisors. Third was the operating arm, the Weather Bureau...

—The Columbia Encyclopedia , 32 Edition,

Columbia University Press

The mass of colors on the great globe shimmered and twisted in silence. The dials on the instruments along the curved walls dimmed and brightened each time the needles moved. The Weather Room presented an indecipherable complex of color to the untrained eye, but to the eyes of the Advisors who lounged there it presented an instantaneous picture of the world’s weather, when they bothered to look at it. The day shift was near its end, and the mathemeteorologists were waiting to go home. Now and then one of them would look at some spot on the great globe to see how the weather pattern reacted—to check on a bit of his own work carried out earlier in the day. But he was not really interested; his mind was on the evening’s date, or dinner, or a hockey game. Even Greenberg, head of the Weather Advisors, felt the general lassitude.

Anna Brackney was too bored to sit still. She got up and wandered into the computer room, plopped down again and punched a 2414 computer to check the day’s match. It was 90.4 percent. She muttered, “Lousy,” and then looked around guiltily. She punched the call-up to see what the match had been last week. Ninety point six. She started to say aloud, “Not bad,” but stopped herself in time. James Eden would not approve of her talking to herself. Idly she punched call-up and looked at the results for last month and the month before that. Then she sat bolt upright, and punched for data for the last six months. Very loudly she said, “Well, well, well, well, what do you know about that?” Ignoring the stares of two computer operators, she marched back into the Weather Room, right up to Greenberg.

“Do you realize,” she said, “that our fit has been slipping a little each week? We are now operating on a fit of a little better than ninety percent, when as recently as six months ago our fit was better than ninety-three percent? Did you realize that?”

Greenberg sat up and looked alert. “No. Are you sure?”

Anna did not bother to answer. Greenberg leaned aside and spoke into a communicator. “Charlie, get me a summary of the weekly fit for the last six months.” He touched a button and said, “Upton, come on out to the Weather Room, will you? We may have a problem.”

Greenberg touched several more buttons. In two minutes there was a circle of people around him, and he held a slip of paper in one hand. He said, “Somehow, in the last six months, we’ve slipped three percentage points in our match. How could that happen?”

The people looked at one another. Upton said, “Everybody thought somebody else was checking the long-term fit. I only compared it with the week before.”

There was a chorus of “So did I,” and Greenberg slapped his forehead. “How in hell could a thing like that happen?” He was a man who normally did not swear. “We’ve been drifting away from acceptable performance for six months and nobody even noticed it? What about the complaints? What kind of complaints we been getting?”

The people shrugged, and Upton spoke for them again. “Nothing special. Just the usual gripes. Two weeks ago the Manitoba Council complained the breeze we made to blow away the mosquitoes was too strong, but—”

“Never you mind,” said Anna Brackney. “That was my mathematical model on that problem, and the twenty-knot wind they got was just right to eliminate the mosquitoes because the foresters—”

“Knock it off,” said Greenberg. “I take it there have been no serious complaints? I’d better check further.” He talked into the phone with one of the secretaries, then said to the group, “Well, it seems we’ve been lucky. Anyhow, we’ve got to find out what’s wrong. And we’ve got to find it before somebody else notices it, or we’ll have the Weather Council on our necks. I wonder if I ought to call President Wilburn.”

The people shook their heads, and Upton said, “I don’t like to be sneaky or anything like that. But if we’ve somehow slipped in our procedures and got away with it, let’s correct them without stirring up trouble. You know politicians.”

Greenberg said, “We’ll all have to stay on this until we find it. All of you willing?”

The people gave up their visions of dinner and dates and hockey games and nodded.

“Okay, then. Each of you set up a program designed to make an independent repeat of your models for the last six months. Most of it was routine stuff, so it won’t be bad. Call in the computer technicians and utilize all of the university’s staff and equipment you need. If you need more, I’ll set up a net and we can pull in everything we need from beyond Stockholm. Monitor your steps and when you find an error feed it into the 9680 as a collecting computer. Any other suggestions?”