Trophy Grove, Page 2

  Chapter 2 - The Law of Extermination

  “What will it be, Zane? The automated bar can provide any concoction you can name, and I guarantee it will perfectly mix whatever drink your thirst requests.”

  I must’ve star-hopped through a hundred systems searching for thrills to feed to old Earth’s crowded masses through the tabloids. I’ve dedicated my career, my entire life, to find the adventures capable of distracting those poor souls stranded back on our original Eden from the stink of a rotting world. Way I see it, my job is to consume all I can, to experience whatever thrills my body can sustain. To do my job well, I believe I’ve got to experience all the pleasure and all the disgust out there in the heavens so I can best share it with the subscribers of my electronic tabloid, so that all those broken men and women waiting for the miracle of a rocket ride beyond Earth’s gravitational tyranny get out of bed each morning to read my essays, regardless if there’s nothing else to occupy their time.

  My job doesn’t have the luggage space for many virtues. My editor doesn’t pay me handsomely to act with moral conviction. He doesn’t pay me to hesitate before boarding some stealth-cloaked star-station pleasure brothel. He doesn’t pay me to pause before I toss back whatever pill or ingest whatever smoke is rumored to spread smiles among the dumb mudder population. My editor learned a long time ago that virtues don’t sell, and I learned a long time ago that there’s a fortune to be made by dropping my morality.

  Still, there are some principles that are harder for me to drop than others. Chief among them is the conviction that anyone who toys with robots is flirting with catastrophe.

  I wink at my host before ordering my drink. “You can remove al the faces, Mr. Jackson, but people will still know better. You might not paint an artificial smile on your machines anymore. You might not dress your electronic bartender in a bow tie. But that machine’s thinking. The logic of mixing and serving drinks might seem really simple at first, but it’s not going to be long until that machine starts waxing poetic about humankind’s existential frailty. That’s exactly how the robots took control of the Turlag asteroid belt, before the fleet expended a fortune in energy blasts to turn all those rocks into molten slag so we could all go back to sleeping at nights knowing the robots were vaporized. Everyone’s going to be able to recognize your bartending machine is really a robot, regardless if it doesn’t have a face. A robot is a robot is a robot.”

  Teddy lifts an eyebrow. “So you don’t want a drink?”

  “I didn’t say that. Give me a bourbon.”

  Teddy laughs. “Zane, let me promise you that the bar stocked on my star yacht will satisfy even your legendary thirst. One bourbon coming your way in a wink.”

  There’s nothing illegal in owning a robot, and there’s nothing illegal in minting a fortune in their manufacture as has Teddy Jackson. There’s still too much heavy lifting to be done in the cosmos to destroy all the robots, and not even a clone mudder survives the vacuum cold of space construction as well as a machine. Still, robots have given folks the creeps since well before the Turlog disaster. I’ll sprinkle a mention or two of a robot into my pages whenever I need to tickle a little fear in my readers, but I don’t like having a robot tending to me any more than anyone else. Call me old-fashioned, but sometimes, I like unloading my sob story on a human barkeep after I’ve earned his or her ear by jangling enough coin into the tip jar. That cathartic release has been missing the few times I’ve been forced to order drinks from a mechanical bar. With a machine watching me drink, I get to feeling guilty for participating in one of my favorite pursuits. I never drink very much in a robot’s company, and I always leave feeling that I’ve missed out on a good time.

  But I don’t mention any of that to Teddy Jackson. I’m not going to voice my prejudices and ruin my chances of enjoying a little luxury as the tycoon’s guest on his safari. I’ve never star-hopped in a finer spacecraft than Teddy Jackson’s private star yacht. The bartending machine whirls and hums, and a panel opens to slide an old fashioned glass filled with liquor to my position at the bar.

  I sip at the bourbon and smile. There’s age and smoke in the drink, and it’s a fine drink no matter if it slid from a machine. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Teddy considering me while he scratches his gray-bearded chin. I worry I may have missed something.

  Marlena’s voice purrs from the stool set on the other side of my own. “The proverbial cat’s stolen even Zane Thomas’ tongue. Dad’s hoping your face betrays an indication that you approve of his new machine.”

  I’ve got high hopes for this trip before we make the first of the jumps into the stars that will in three Earth months deliver us to a distant planet named Tybalt on the edge of the galaxy. Marlena’s company inspires optimism. Her dark brown eyes glimmer as they laugh at me, and her dark hair reflects the color of the neon billboards built in low, Earth orbit as they wink outside the star yacht’s viewing window. I’m seldom at a loss for words when faced with even the strangest of events during my excursions, but I have to admit I’ve been finding it a little difficult to retrieve my vocabulary whenever Marlena’s drifting near me.

  “Oh, your old man just has too many beautiful things to comment on just one,” I answer while bourbon warms my throat. “I’ve got to say I’m a little taken by it all, and that’s not a routine sentiment for me.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t,” Marlena replies. “I’ve read a few of your articles.”

  Teddy laughs, and his broad shoulders shake in merriment as his meaty forearms fall upon the bar counter.

  “You see now, Marlena? I knew what I was doing when I invested in that new line of mechanical barkeeps. I’ve even got Zane Thomas stretching for words, and is there a more difficult drinker out there to impress than him?”

  Marlena rolls her dark eyes. “The ugly can steal the breath as easily as can the beautiful.”

  Teddy chuckles. “I don’t mind the ugly just so long as I can sell it.”

  I don’t really believe Teddy, for there’s nothing at all ugly about Mr. Jackson’s star yacht. I’m hard-pressed to remember a time when my surroundings were any more opulent than those of Teddy’s viewing cabin. Still, though I’ve found myself in all kinds of harry situations in my time as a star-jumping journalist – be it riding with the Neo Mongols through the dust rings of Lethe or walking barefoot across the ice fields with the nomads of Iniut – I’ve seldom felt as unsettled as I do as I sit at my bar stool and sip at my bourbon. Too bad that machine behind the counter isn’t a warm-blooded, breathing human who might alleviate my anxiety by explaining why my alarm is unnecessary. But something warns me that pouring my heart out to either Teddy or Marlena would be foolish, and so I finish my bourbon and give the machine the opportunity to refill my glass.

  Marlena winks at me. “Maybe you can settle a debate I have with my father, Zane. Do you think my old man still has room for more trophies in this viewing cabin, or do you think he’s got too many heads already mounted on these walls?”

  Teddy chuckles. “I’ve got close to fifty years of safari beneath my belt, son, and all the trophies mounted in this room are only a fraction of the creatures I killed in the stars before the League implemented their Law of Extermination.”

  Horns and heads crowd the paneled walls of the viewing chamber. I don’t recognize most of the animals on display; the universe is too large, and my time star-hopping doesn’t provide me with much knowledge concerning alien life forms. A dozen chromatic eyes return my stare from a head that’s a combination of a bee and dolphin. Horns rise and knot together from the head of a creature that reminds me of an antelope from the videos of the extinct, lost world our teachers in elementary academy were always showing us; yet there is no mouth, nor eyes, on that visage, only horns that fan out and twist together into a tangle. All kinds of winged creatures suspend from the ceiling, and their talons make me cringe as my imagination dreams of them swooping upon me while I sip at my bourbon.

  Safari excursions hit their zen
ith before my time. Nearly a hundred years after the last of Earth’s wildlife died into memory, the starship yards owned by Teddy Jackson’s grandfather couldn’t keep up with the demand to construct the luxury starliners needed to deliver Earth tourists to alien planets teeming with alien life, where such visitors could gaze upon, and even shoot, the animals that, somewhere in the stars, still lived in the wild. But that was an age before the League instituted their Law of Extermination, an age before the League demanded that every trace of native life must be obliterated before human settlers and tourists could step upon an alien landscape.

  And now something on the planet Tybalt prevents the obliteration contractors from completing their task to eradicate all signs of life on that distant planet in preparation for human settlement. Rumors claim the clone mudders who toil on Tybalt refuse to kill a strange beast lurking on the world. I doubt it took Teddy Jackson long to remove all his hunting weapons from storage. I’m sure he didn’t waste any time before servicing his star yacht for the race out to Tybalt. My editor and I weren’t going to turn down Teddy’s invitation to ride along on safari. The hunts the man once conducted with his father remain legendary, and subscribers across the spoiled Earth still spend their precious coin to buy the accounts of Teddy’s exploits. Mr. Jackson is no doubt hoping my flair with the pen is going to help remind humankind of the glorious days of the hunt, and eventually force the League to rescind their Law of Extermination, or at least amend the legislation to give old safari hunters like Teddy a chance to again chase exotic and alien game.

  I spot the snarling shapes of bristles and tusks just when I think I’m not going to recognize any of the creatures in Teddy’s collection.

  “Is that a razor boar?” I gape as I point at the trophy.

  Teddy smiles, and I know my curiosity pleases him. “It is. It’s the legendary razor boar. I never included the hunt of that monster in any of my safari journals, and I never included its photo in any of the coffee-table, picture books of my hunts that remain so popular. But let me tell you, Zane, what you’ve likely heard of those beasts conveys hardly a fraction of the terror those boars inspired.”

  “Weren’t those razor boars responsible for the massacre of those colonists on Delphi Prime?” I stammer.

  “Indeed they were,” Marlena answers, “and that massacre motivated the League to craft their Law of Extermination. Earth’s too crowded and hungry, and the League can’t afford having anyone hesitate to board the ready rocket on account of being scared of any monsters.”

  Teddy raises a finger, and his machine serves him a straight whiskey. “The razor-sharp bristles on those boars are terrible enough. The ones on that trophy would still draw blood if you touched them even now, and the boars could launch those bristles like projectiles with very precise, and cruel, aim. But the boars didn’t kill the colonists of Delphi Prime with their bristles, nor did they kill any of those first settlers with claws or teeth. Everyone found out too late that the boars shared a kind of a hive mind, and that hive mind too soon discovered that by gnawing a cable here, a power cord there, that carbon monoxide could easily, and quickly, poison the settlers while they slept in their barracks. The boars waited until winter turned cold and made the night very long and dark before digging below the ground to sever at those cables. The boars knew to wait until all the settlers would let down their guard and all sleep at the same time. None of those colonists woke come the morning.”

  I nod. “I remember the story, but I never knew the details. I was just starting out as an electronic tabloid writer, think I was doing a story on the hang-gliders of the Sunshine Retreat when the story broke. I’ll never forget how all the resort guests kept peeking beneath their beds following the news.”

  “The response was heavy-handed, to say the least,” Marlena growls. “All that fear that floated through the heavens on the star-hopping passenger liners and fleet cruisers produced the demand for the Law of Extermination. The League has always failed to address any issue responsible for our old world’s ever-quickening demise; but the League’s passed the Law of Extermination, and they never miss a chance to trumpet the legislation, as if that asinine law’s going to save any of us come the end.”

  “It might not be our salvation, but I’m not sure the law’s as foolish as you say,” I argue. “Humankind’s been settling new planets for hardly fifty years, and that’s been plenty enough time to teach us colonization is filled with peril. What would we do if another virus jumped from some alien species to our own? We barely contained the pneumonia strand the settlers on Cassiopeia contracted from the alien tundra weed. It makes a lot of sense to simply burn everything away so we can safely start anew.”

  Teddy snarls. “It’s a horrible law. No way around it. That bristle boar stuffed there in the corner’s the last of my trophies from the wonderful days of safari. I was among those who raced to Delphi Prime to hunt out the last traces of the razor boar, and those alien monsters nearly got all of us. But in the end, humanity prevailed, and the contest made all of us stronger for the thrill and the chase. Now, the League simply sends in the cheap mudders with their flame torches. Now, they only waste, and they don’t let anything alien live long enough to supply a hunt.”

  “Not to mention the tragedy of annihilating an entire alien species,” Marlena rolls her eyes at her father. “Human ignorance is the ultimate danger we face out here amid all these twinkling stars.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” and I raise my bourbon. “Perhaps we’ll someday find a civilization in the middle of all this black nothing smarter than ourselves. Perhaps we might still find that race of aliens that can save us from ourselves.”

  Marlena shrugs. “We’d only try to butcher them as well.”

  Teddy shakes his head. “I’m not so sure. There are stipulations to the Law of Extermination that force the obliteration contractors to cease their work if they should ever trip upon anything resembling alien civilization.”

  “As if the obliteration contractors care for such a stipulation, even if they did possess the brain power to recognize intelligence when they came upon it,” Marlena chokes on a laugh. “They’d only wait long enough to martial the League fleet before vaporizing anything smart enough to avoid their mudder flamethrowers and bulldozers.”

  I understand Marlena’s frustration. My heart understands what she’s saying. But the problem is that all her arguments are old, and humankind chose to ignore her side of the debate a very long time ago. A quick glance at the condition of festering Earth clearly conveys the scant empathy humankind has for any living creature other than itself. No matter what I think, or even what I might write, the League’s not going to revoke the Law of Extermination anytime in the near future. In the meanwhile, I’ve got a living to make, and if my readers want to read about my experiences tagging along with Teddy Jackson as the old hunter goes on a new safari, then I’m not going to refuse them that story on account of moral argument.

  Besides, I’m too excited about the upcoming safari to let arguments regarding the sanctity of alien life detract from my trip. Star safaris were all the rage before the League instituted their Law of Extermination. Before that bill, the alien wildlife discovered on some distant planet’s mountain range or forest had a chance to survive the initial wave of colonization to give the hunters time to jump the stars before arriving to sever those animals’ heads and mount them to the walls of their star yachts. My grandfather hunted with the earliest safaris, and I never tired of listening to the old man share his adventures of facing some alien herd thundering across a planet. The man planted that fascination with star-hopping in me, and I’ve often imagined how I might handle myself on a hunting expedition. Those were brave and hardy men and women back in the glorious days of safari. Those hunters never relied on a robotic sentry to save them if they should miss some charging creature with their pulse rifle.

  Starliner companies started offering year-long excursions from one safari to the next before those boars on Delphi Prime kill
ed all those settlers in their sleep and inspired the League to pass their Law of Extermination. The starliners could promise that each tourist would have an opportunity to take his or her shot at some alien creature during the golden era of the safari. The passenger starliners were the first to employ the heavily-armed robots with the quick reflexes and precise tracking sensors that killed any creature a tourist might’ve missed with his or her laser pistol before that riled beast could come near enough to the vacationer to inflict any harm. No one in the glorious safari days needed to worry about robots rising up on mining asteroids, or of mudders burning all the prey before a tourist had a chance to look at the wildlife that still lived beyond the tame Earth. Whenever the hunters eventually killed off the best game, they simply returned to their waiting starliner and hopped to the planet next named on the itinerary.

  Theodore “Teddy” Jackson grew up during the heart of that golden age of safari and adventure. His father, Thaddeus, designed and controlled nearly every patent on the second-generation faster-than-light engines whose efficiency made hopping between the stars affordable, making human settlement of the stars attainable and fostering the tourist trade throughout the heavens. Thaddeus’ wealth swelled beyond imagination, but contentment never soothed the tycoon. Thaddeus’ fortune constructed the first starliners, and the influence his wealth cultivated within the League granted Thaddeus’ ships the privilege to travel the star-hopping routes established by the military fleet. Upon accumulating his second fortune in the trade of star travel and recreation, Thaddeus built a third trove of treasure in the manufacture of the robotic sentries first employed to escort hunting tourists, machines soon afterwards sold to the League’s expeditionary forces at a bloated cost.

  Thaddeus didn’t send his son Theodore to study in private and prestigious academies, nor did he foster skills of business negotiation and book-keeping in his only son. Teddy received his education during those safari expeditions he shared with his father. The boy could shoot almost any weapon before he turned ten, and he knew how to dismantle and reassemble the most complicated of laser cannons before he was old enough to receive his driver’s license. Teddy taught himself how to speak the clicks and clacks of enunciated binary, so that he could more efficiently communicate with the sentry robots that followed him like shadows. He navigated his first star-hop in the navigation room of his father’s star yacht on his thirteenth birthday, and Teddy demonstrated such a mastery over the delicate, and deadly, calculations demanded to skirt black hole event horizons and exploding supernovas that the League granted him an exemption from the age restrictions placed on jumping starcraft between the stars. Teddy leaned how to provision all the supplies and ships his father’s more difficult safaris demanded. And while accompanying his father during the hunts, Teddy learned how to command robot, mudder and man.

  Teddy Jackson never had to earn a living. A wealth far beyond his capacity to spend continued to multiply. Teddy had all the privilege he needed to devote his life to the chase of the intergalactic safari, until the League passed its Law of Extermination.

  It dawns on me how much Teddy Jackson must despise that law.

  “How long has it been since you went on safari?” I gingerly ask.

  “Fifteen years, four months and three days,” Teddy instantly answers. “Before the obliteration contractors pooled their resources together to build the communication array tying the stars together, I used to, for a while, be able to intercept settler communiques and race my star yacht out to the alien game discovered on some new planet before the contractors had time to muster their mudder forces and set the wildlife to flame. But even the fastest engines produced by my manufacturing plants have little chance of beating the mudders to any planet anymore. The obliteration contractors simply store too many mudders in cryo-freeze along all the star-jump routes. The mudders of the obliteration contractors arrive too quickly on any planet to give us hunters a chance to take a shot at anything.”

  I sip at my bourbon. “Why don’t the obliteration contractors try their hand at selling safari vacations of their own? Seems the business would still be lucrative.”

  Marlena shakes her head. “The real money for the obliterators exists in enticing settlers to their prepared planets. The obliterators take a cut in any of the profits a planet produces for another hundred years, and so they’re real interested to see that settlers arrive to start plowing fields and digging up mines. The obliterators don’t want to waste any of their time or resources holding hands of tourists out on vacation killing sprees.”

  “Would the obliterators have to watch them?” I ask.

  Teddy nods. “Marlena’s got most of it right, but she doesn’t have all of it. A repeat of Delphi Prime is the very last thing the obliterators’ efforts to entice human settlement need. Why risk the chance of an injury to some hunter spreading any fear back to old Earth of what waits for humankind out in the stars? No, it’s a safer play for the obliterators to simply release their clone mudders to destroy any of the danger. No one cares what happens to a mudder.”

  I understand. I deluded myself back when I was just another student struggling through his academy courses of metallurgy and physics into thinking that good books and careful words might elevate humankind’s nature. But that silly notion eventually only led me to drink, and all those skills I crafted with the world only tossed me from one star-hop to the next in search of the latest story that might entertain the miserable and dull masses languishing on Earth’s carcass. So many subscribers to my editor’s electronic tabloid send messages complaining about how badly they need a new home in the heavens, or of how the League intentionally denies them their right to lift into the stars. Those subscribers will believe one conspiracy after another as to why the rockets haven’t yet lifted them away from Earth, and I’ve certainly stacked a high pile of shimmering coin by writing out a dozen fictional conspiracies of my own to feed to those subscribers. Yet it wouldn’t surprise me at all if those same complaining subscribers refused to enter a rocket ship due to even a whisper of a monster waiting in the firmament.

  I nod. “But we’ve got a safari now. What’s happened to make Tybalt different? What’s happened that gives us an opportunity to find something to shoot now? How are we beating the obliterators to the punch?”

  Marlena winks. “Oh, the obliterators are asking for our help.”

  “Evidently,” Teddy tips his whiskey glass towards me, “the mudders can’t kill whatever’s waiting for us on Tybalt.”

  I swallow, and my bourbon burns. “Tell me you’re joking. The mudders are far from the cowardly kind, and they certainly don’t have any sympathies for animal life – all of those things have been bred out of them for generations. I find it hard to believe that there’s any creature holding out against those clones, and I’ve learned to believe in many strange things in my experience hopping about the stars.”

  “Something’s keeping the obliterators and their mudders from scraping Tybalt clean for human settlement,” Marlena shrugs.

  I peer into those dark eyes. “The mudders can’t find it?”

  Teddy swirls his whiskey glass. “From what I’ve heard, the mudders know exactly where to find it, but they don’t have the nerve to kill it.”

  I don’t like the sound of that at all. I’ve likely spent more time among the clone mudders than any other human. Like I said, I can’t let morality get in the way of chasing an entertaining story, and some of my most popular features have focused on the mudders. The clones fear nothing. That’s likely the reason why their parties are so legendary. I’ve watched the mudders light one another’s arms on fire and wager on which clone can hold out the longest against the pain. I’ve watched mudders punch one another in the face to simply see who can take a smack without flinching. Mudder clones play really simple, combat sports. They’re the kind of life that gets a kick out of riding barrels down waterfalls and smashing through windows. They don’t live long enough to learn how to be afraid of anything, and I hate to
imagine what kind of creature’s been found out in these stars to give the mudders pause.

  “They must’ve found one ugly animal.” I offer.

  “Or a beautiful one,” Marlena quips.

  I laugh and raise a finger for a new bourbon. “You don’t know the mudders.”

  “No, I don’t,” Marlena responds, “but I know beauty.”

  I tip my glass. I’ll not argue with that. Beauty knows Marlena Jackson, and I don’t doubt that Marlena Jackson intimately knows it. Her presence is another storyline that makes this expedition with Teddy Jackson one that’s impossible for my editor or myself to deny.

  “We’ll learn soon enough why the mudders can’t kill it,” Teddy speaks, “but for now, we’re still three months out from Tybalt. Time enough to get to know one another. Time enough to make the most of my fully-stocked bar.”

  I drink to that, but later – when my antique wristwatch tells me night hangs over my hovel of a city apartment back on Earth – I can’t fall asleep no matter how my head spins on account of too much bourbon. I’m no fragile flower. I can handle myself. I’ve had to learn how to protect my noggin due to the company I’ve often kept during my travels.

  Still, I feel the urge to peek beneath my bed in the guest cabin.

  And I haven’t felt the need to do that since I wrote about the hang-gliders while staying at the Sunshine Retreat.

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