Джон Макдональд - The Hunted [Short Story]

The lesser gravity of Earth gave the two creatures a free, bounding stride as they walked down the slope toward the pens. The myriad facets of their eyes caught the morning sun with the iridescent gleam of oil on water. As was the rule when inspecting the penned creatures, they both carried the tiny silver tubes which, when properly aimed, blocked all neural impulses except those necessary to sustain life.

To the two of them, the penned creatures were a source of excitement. Thome, the elder of the two, said in his piping voice, “A new lot came through yesterday. I want to get your opinion.”

They stopped and looked through the electrified wire. Riss, the younger, made a high thin sound of satisfaction. “Excellent! They are in fine shape. Look at that one.”

They both looked with proprietary pride at a young naked man who stood and stared sullenly at them. He was well over six feet tall, heavily muscled, his tan skin marked with the white scar tissue of many wounds. His blue eyes seemed to flare with the instinct to kill as be looked at the two outside the fence.

“It seems odd,” said Thome, “that die first of us to come here found these creatures repulsive. I have become quite fond of them.”

“In a way,” Riss said, “it is sad.” He turned and pointed to the shattered skyline of Chicago. “They were far enough advanced to have built their crude cities, even to release a fractional part of the power of the atom. Who can tell what their destiny might have been?”

Thome giggled. “You are too imaginative. They are too wild to have continued to live with the atomic power in their grasp. We saved them from themselves.”

Riss shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. And then again, in the last eighty years of breeding, while we strove for ferocity and cunning, we may have bred out of the race some leavening factor which would have enabled them to overcome their innate murderous instincts.”

“This group will make good sport,” Thome said proudly.

“What is planned?”

“Tomorrow I am expecting a rather large party. We will release twenty of these creatures in the ruined city. All will contribute and a prize will be given to him who brings the most of them down.”

Riss frowned. “They are dangerous in the city. It is better to hunt them on the plain.”

Thome giggled again. “All the better. The sport lasts longer. Would you like to inspect that one?”

Riss nodded. Thome adjusted the switch on the small silver tube. As he aimed it, there were hoarse cries of fear from the pen. But the young blond man only crouched and drew his lips back from strong white teeth. Thome carefully sprayed the group with the silver tube and they froze in position. One, caught off balance, fell heavily.

After throwing the switch, Thome opened the gate and the two of them went into the pen. The blond young man was frozen in his half-crouched position. They walked around him while Riss prodded his muscles, inspected the white teeth.

“A fine specimen,” he said at last. “Will he be used for breeding?”

“If he is not too seriously injured in the hunt.”

Peter could not move his eyes. Many times this undignified thing had happened to him and each time it made him furious. The two dead-white beings with the silver tubes walked back out and slammed the gate. He could see their movement from the corner of his eye.

The silver tube was pointed again and the power that had kept him immobile was suddenly released. He looked at them, made a low growling sound in his throat and turned away. His hands itched with the desire to get hold of them, to tear their pale flesh, sink his teeth in their tiny throats, smash in the huge many-faceted eyes.

Vaguely he wondered why they had looked so carefully at him. This was a new pen. In the beginning, the first thing he remembered was the pen of the children. That was when he learned about the fence. Only once had he been thrown back stunned, after touching it. Yet he had seen others in the children’s pen touch the wire many times.

In the end of the runway was the feeding trough. It was wise to run quickly at feeding time, to push the others away, to snarl and bite and strike out. If you missed too many feeding times, you became weak and then never again would you be able to feed. The others would push you away and then you would lie down on the dirt and breathe no more.

In the pen of the children he was the strongest. All bowed to his fist and his sharp teeth. He remembered the time they had moved him from the pen of the children to the pen of the young men. He had not wanted to leave the pen of the children. A week before, he would have been glad to leave, glad of the change. But he had begun to have an odd feeling when he looked at the girl-child they called Mary. He did not want to leave when they moved him.

The pen of the young men had been vast. There was not so much fighting there, because of the work. The work was strange. Great stones had to be carried back and forth without reason. And then, of course, there was the running.

He did not know how long he had been in the pen of the young men. It was like the children’s pen in that there was a place for sleeping, with a roof, and the feeding trough. And the wire.

Then he had been moved. One sun ago he and many from the pen of the young men had been moved to this much smaller pen. It was far too small. He felt cramped, stifled.

As the two walked away from the wire, back up the slope toward the white sphere in which they lived, Peter turned back toward the sleeping place. The others laughed at him because he had been prodded and inspected.

“Oh-eh, they will kill you and eat you, Peter,” one of them said.

The others laughed deeply in their throats.

Peter pretended not to notice. He walked slowly by the group. Then, bunching the muscles of his huge legs, he threw himself at them, striking them at ankle height with his hurtling body. He was the first to scramble to his feet. He did not use the blows that kill; just punishing blows. His square fists smacked against flesh. One of them leaped onto his back and with a quick twist he threw the man against the wire. There was a puff, the smell of signed flesh. They crept away from Peter and laughed no more.

He inflated his big chest and thumped it twice with a heavy fist, making a hollow booming that resounded through the pen. At the sound, an older man swaggered out of the sleeping place. He was more scarred than was Peter. Peter had given the challenge.

Stiff-legged they walked around each other, making small sounds in their throats. Once the challenge has been made, the fight must be to the death. Peter saw that this was an old one, a clever one.

The clever one’s body was nearly covered with tightly curled reddish-brown hair. His face was scarred so that one side of his mouth was always drawn up away from the yellow teeth in a snarl.

The old one feinted, thrust at Peter’s eyes with long nails. Peter slid away from the stab, clamped his fingers on the other’s wrist and spun. The old one cleverly threw himself in the right direction so that his arm did not snap. In doing so, he brought his shoulder close to Peter’s mouth. Peter’s teeth met in the meat of his shoulder, and then with a wrench of mighty neck muscles, he tore a long strip of flesh loose. The old one bawled, leaped away, blood staining his arm, dripping from his fingertips.

The others in the pen, some thirty of them, stood in a loose circle and watched without expression, without sound.

Once more they circled each other. This time the old one was more cautious. He knew his muscles were stronger, but that he was not so quick.