"Perimeter breach in area seven,"
said Alan. He calmly turned off the
alarm, glanced at a small, glowing circle on the map on the monitor, and then
bent over his laptop, typing quickly. A
new window opened, which would allow him to track the progress made by the
hunter-killer machine. Debbie and French
crowded in behind him, trying to get a better look.
"I can't see
anything," French complained. The
new window was dark and tiny.
"I'll switch to
infrared in a minute. Just let me get
the final calibrations done. It's the
first time we're going after a live target, after all," Alan replied. "And would you mind moving your
beard? I think it's inside my ear."
French grunted and moved
half a step back, taking his foot-and-a-half long black and gray beard with
him. Alan nodded his thanks, still
typing. He looked at his readouts, typed
some more, and paused, watching.
By this time, even the
normally unflappable Debbie was moving impatiently from one foot to another,
anxiety getting the better of her.
"Well?" she
said.
Alan started, his
concentration broken. "Oh, right,
sorry." He typed in a command,
causing the small window to turn from a vague black-on-black morass into a
green and gray display easily identified as the feed from an infrared
camera. Now they could see what the
hunter-killer machine was seeing.
The view was,
unsurprisingly, low to the ground. The
machine was built for stealth, and part of that was the need to keep potential
victims from seeing it coming. In
consequence, the leaves on the bushes at the side of the path rushed far
overhead as the machine raced down the track.
"How come it doesn't
hit anything?" Debbie, who had flown in just two days before from a
fund-raising meeting in
"No, of course
not," Alan replied testily.
"That's only on TV shows. It
reacts that way because I put the position of every bloody tree, bush and rock
into its GPS system by hand, and programmed it not to run into them. Why do you think it took so long?"
New information flashed
across the screen.
"Our intruder seems
to have tripped another motion detector.
Now Rocky'll adjust his
course." Rocky was Alan's
pet name for the hunter-killer.
Sure enough, the image in
the window showed a small correction in course, to the left of the screen, and
a sudden absence of undergrowth overhead.
"Hmm...seems our uninvited guest is down on the beach."
"You think he was
brought in by sea?" asked French.
"We'll have a look
after we take him down."
The infrared monitor
showed movement ahead: the unmistakable heat signature of something alive,
which disappeared almost immediately.
"So, what do you
think we're dealing with?" asked Debbie.
Alan looked back at them
and shrugged.
"Cat."
"You could tell just
from that quick look?"
"No. Call it an educated guess. The fact that it came in from the seaside
makes a cat the most likely candidate."
On the green screen,
things suddenly got lively. The
hunter-killer accelerated, jostling the camera, making it very hard to see what
was happening. They got a vague sense of
the heat signature, reacquired now, centered in the window, and saw two faint
points shoot from the machine and impact the brighter blob on the screen, which
moved drunkenly for a few more seconds and collapsed.
Alan stood up, stretched
his arms, and reached for his coat.
"So, want to go see
who our uninvited guest actually was?" he asked, but too late. Debbie and French had already donned their jackets
and were heading for the door.
Stopping only to pick up
a flashlight while shaking his head at the way his nominal elders often forgot
to do anything practical in their enthusiasm, he followed them out.
Entry by sea was less
difficult, but only slightly. Here on
the southwest corner of
As Alan ran down the path
towards the beach, he was given a sharp reminder of why it was always better to
be careful on these slopes, tripping over a bush and badly twisting his
ankle. He didn't pause long, being too
excited by the fact that that they had been able to test the machine,
and that it had worked. He continued to
hobble after Debbie and French, finally catching them about halfway to the
site. His injury made the going
difficult, but he had a light and they didn't.
French supported his
weight the rest of the way down, and ten minutes later, they reached the
machine, which, having fulfilled its directives was in standby mode: powered
down and waiting for instructions.
Ignoring it, they made for a point a couple of meters further ahead,
where the light picked out a small, furry lump, completely immobile on the ground. Two pale elements protruded from the shape. Darts.
"Nice shooting, Kid,"
French said.
"Not my
shooting. All I did was program the
machine. The rest was automatic."
"Nice programming,
then. Both darts,
right on target." French
prodded the furry lump with his foot, turning it over. It was a cat. A lean, mean-looking one,
too.
French grinned evilly in
the dim light. "Well, that's one
cat that won't be having a Kakapo dinner tonight," he chuckled. "Or ever again." He pounded Alan on the back in glee.
"Trouble," said
Debbie unexpectedly. While the men had
been congratulating each other on the effectiveness of the attack, she had gone
down on one knee and given the cat a quick once-over. She had lifted one of the cat's paws toward
the Alan and French. Wrapped around the
foreleg was a GPS locator ring, one of those that included a heart rate
monitor, the kind used by biologists and conservationists to track animals in
study populations. And only one group
would want to track a cat in this National Park.
"ARoE!"
spat French.
Animal Rights on Earth
purported to look after all animals, and they had the impeccable public image
to go with that. But, in reality, they
were more concerned with cuddly things like rabbits and white mice, things that
could be used effectively to touch the public's heartstrings and
pocketbooks. In consequence, they made a
big fuss about animal testing and fur, but ignored most endangered species
completely. Until a few years before,
Alan knew that French had regarded them, even the fringe elements who really
believed in the cause, as useless but essentially harmless.
That was before French
tried to reintroduce the extremely endangered Kakapo to mainland
Debbie and Alan waited
for his decision.
He looked at them and
then shrugged. "I'm not really sure
what this means, other than the fact that it can't be a good thing. One thing is certain, we won't get any
answers standing out here in the cold in the middle of the night. Let's go to bed and see if the other shoe
drops tomorrow."
Shaking his head, he
started wearily back up the hill towards the cabin.
On a different hill, a
Kakapo boomed majestically, the sound echoing in the dark valleys.
Despite the previous night's proclamation,
French didn't wait for the repercussions of the incident. At four-thirty in the morning, Debbie
cheerfully roused Alan for his early-morning Kakapo rounds. Since Kakapo were nocturnal creatures, the
best time to observe them was very early in the morning, while there was some
light to see by, but before they went to sleep.
Alan hadn't really signed
on to observe Kakapos – he was more interested in using technology to defend
them – but French had told him in no
uncertain terms that on a station as undermanned as this one, and in the middle
of nowhere to boot, he would have to do his part of the watching if he wanted
the job.
Alan had agreed, so, soon
after being awoken, he was sitting on a mountaintop watching a male Kakapo trim
the grass around his track-and-bowl system, feeling a little awed by the whole
thing.
His awe wasn't directed
at the track-and-bowl system, which was merely a couple of dirt paths and a
small depression in the dirt, built by the Kakapo for acoustic reasons to help
project its booming mating call, nor was he impressed by the Kakapo itself, a
small, gray-green parrot which had almost become extinct because it couldn't
fly.
No. The reason for his awe was that the Kakapo
was there at all. There on mainland
Like most of
But then French, a
wealthy inheritor who was volunteering at the New Zealand Department of
Conservation, had had a dream. More
importantly, he'd also had the money to pull it off and the bloody mindedness
to bend a few laws and not care whom it might offend.
Five short years later, Alan
was watching a Kakapo go peacefully about its business on the mainland.
Alan shook his head and
kept taking notes.
"Mr. Phillips, is it true that your
parrots are clones?"
Debbie and Alan winced,
exchanging a significant look. The other
shoe had taken a few days to drop, but when it did, it left no doubts. The weekly helicopter had disgorged two
suspiciously well-informed reporters and a quiet man from the Department of
Conservation.
Despite the fact that
French was a loose cannon - his hatred of reporters
being even more notorious than his hatred of being called 'Mr. Phillips' - they
were all aware that the man from the DOC was the more immediate danger.
"In the first place,
they're not my Kakapos. They're wild
animals, we only study them and protect them from exotic predators," French
said abruptly, obviously ill-at-ease in front of the TV camera. "And yes, they are clones." He paused, holding a finger up to avoid
further questions while he gathered his thoughts. "It wasn't the ideal solution, of
course. Ideally, we would have used a
diverse genetic selection to create our colony.
Unfortunately, there wasn't enough diversity on the
"So they aren't real
Kakapos," the reporter, a typical blond media woman, went on in her
typical matter-of-fact media voice. The
fact that she had no idea what she was talking about didn't really seem to faze
her much.
"Don't be daft, woman. Of course they're real!" French exploded.
Debbie made a face, her
expression mirroring Alan's knowledge that any sympathy for their cause in that
particular channel's audience would disappear after the interview was edited
and aired. But then, that was French for
you - much more comfortable around parrots than people.
"But they're
clones?" Still unperturbed, the reporter pressed her advantage.
"That only means
that they're identical to each other and genetically similar to the original
couple. They're perfectly good
Kakapos."
"The public doesn't
see it that way. What they see is that
you're killing real animals to protect these clones. Don't you think that's a bit of a
contradiction?"
French glared at her and
turned around abruptly.
"Goodbye," he
said, storming towards the cabin.
The reporter called after
him.
"What about the
reports that you stole the original female to start this colony? Are they true?"
His only reply was the
slamming of the door.
Debbie sighed. "That went well." She turned to Alan. "Get inside and try to calm him down
while I fetch Mr. Webber."
She strode over to the
man in the DOC windbreaker, exchanged a few pleasantries, and began speaking in
earnest.
By the time she had
convinced the DOC man to visit the cabin, Alan had
succeeded in bringing only relative calm, although the debris of a wooden chair
clearly marked the tranquility as recent.
French was sitting in another chair, muttering darkly into his enormous
beard.
"Hello, Ed," he
growled at Webber, "come to cut my funding?"
"You know it's not
that simple."
"Answer my
question."
Webber just nodded, but
at least he had the good grace to look embarrassed about it.
"Typical," said
French.
"Oh, come on. You know you're not making it easy for
us. We want to keep funding
this project. You know we think it's
important. It's just that you're getting
the public against us with your overbearing attitude. That's not the best way to get government
funding, you know. And neither was
stealing that female Kakapo. The island
team was sick with worry."
"I didn't steal
anything. I borrowed it and I returned
it in better shape than it left, and with a fertilized egg inside, so don't
give me that."
"You know, killing
all the cats in the National Park didn't help either. Rats or stoats were fine, but people are
partial to cats. And
also to Rabbits."
"The rabbits were
eating the podocarp fruit," grumbled
French. Both men knew that the podocarp, which flowered once every two years
was the Kakapo's main source of nourishment during mating ritual.
"Well, it's all moot
now, anyway. Without funding, you'll
have to pull the plug."
French looked at him and
laughed heartily. "Did you really
think that your funding was keeping us going?
Oh, it didn't hurt, but it was only covering about ten percent of our costs! Did you really think that we could be this
effective in cloning the Kakapos and defending their territory without a real
investment, as opposed to the pittance the DOC was sending us? Fortunately, I'm rich enough that I can take
the hit. We aren't going anywhere."
Webber actually looked
relieved.
"Good," he
said. "You know you'll still have
our chopper available, only you'll have to pay for pilot time and fuel. And, of course, your permit to use this land
is still valid." He walked to the door,
looking back one final time. "We
really want you to succeed, French. It's
just that we can't justify sending you money.
These AroE people are really good with the PR,
and, well, you're a PR disaster."
"Bugger off,
Ed."
Webber shrugged, closing
the door behind him.
The weeks immediately after the interview were
enormously quiet, as if the world outside the reserve had forgotten about them
completely. Alan was particularly bored,
since his machine had had only a few exotic rodents for target practice during
that time.
So he was caught
completely unprepared when four of the motion detectors on the beach went off
simultaneously, indicating separate breaches at each.
"Shit!" he
exclaimed, typing furiously to get the hunter-killer online.
Debbie looked up from her
book. French was out Kakapo watching,
but on that chilly April night, he hadn't been able to cajole or bully either
of his teammates into joining him.
"What's up?"
she asked, looking over his shoulder at the monitor.
"Multiple non-kakapo
life forms along the beach. At least
four of them," Alan replied.
"What kind?"
"No idea. They caught me snoozing, and Rocky hasn't
caught up yet to make a visual. It can't
be too big though, because I'm having trouble getting them on infrared."
"OK, get the machine
on the job and see if you can take them down.
I'll get French and move to the area.
Try not to hit us with the darts."
This was a running joke among them since the machine had done exactly
that during calibration, hitting French in the boot with a – fortunately empty
– dart, despite Alan's assurances that anything the size of a human would be
ignored by the programming. Debbie
paused to pick up a radio handset.
"Call us when you bag something so we can recover." She left.
Alan got to work. This was what he'd signed up
for. Electronic perimeter defense in an
important cause, and damn the torpedoes.
Despite being caught
unprepared, the combination of the machine's mobility, the motion sensors
placed strategically along the beach, and Alan's own programming ability, the
hunter-killer was quickly in the area. A
couple of minutes later, he finally had a scurrying heat signature on the
monitor. Too small for a cat,
he decided. A rat maybe? A big
one.
The machine shot after
the rapidly receding heat signature on full automatic. Alan was along for the ride, and he watched
the intruder take a sharp left and climb a rock, evidently feeling safe at a
distance of two meters. A single dart
brought it down.
One
down. He used the central
radio to call Debbie's handset and indicated where the body lay. Then he concentrated on the screen, ready to
lend a hand in the unlikely event that the machine should need further
instructions.
An hour passed, two. Alan giving commands, the hunter-killer he'd
designed and built executing them. By
the time Debbie returned, grim-faced, to the cabin, they'd managed to get three
intruders, but could find no trace of the fourth.
Debbie cursed softly to
herself at the table, arousing his curiosity and prompting him to tear himself
away from the keyboard to go have a look.
On the table was a rat - dead,
tagged, bigger than he expected, and somewhat strange-looking.
"What's wrong with
it?" he asked.
Debbie grunted in
disgust. "It's been altered
genetically, and I'm guessing that the external changes you noticed are
actually the less important modifications.
I'll just bet this rat got a behavior mod."
"But wouldn't
genetic modification take a long time?"
At least a few generations of rats?" he asked.
Debbie gave him an
exasperated look.
"Computer
engineers," she said, shaking her head in mock disgust. "You're all the same. You think the field of cybernetics is the
only one that has advanced in the last hundred years."
"Yeah,
cute. Now can you answer
my question?"
"OK. Genetics has advanced as well. If you want a particular characteristic, you
take normal donor DNA and fiddle with the molecules until you have the
configuration you need. And then you
clone off a few copies. Hence our friend the super-rat, abilities as yet unknown."
"But
why?"
"It's just a guess,
but it seems to me that the nutty elements in AroE
have it in for us and they've decided to forego the passive activities they've
been using up to this year. They seem to
have decided that, while this program exists, their precious money-generating bunnies
and cats won't be safe roaming around
"And
the rats?"
"Oh, I guess they're
modified to attack Kakapos," she said, but then seemed to think better of
it. "No, even as large as this, they're
still too small to attack Kakapos. Probably built to go after the eggs. Unless they mucked with their aggressiveness..."
"That," said Alan, "is truly messed up." He knew that some eco-groups fought over
public funding, but to deliberately go after critically endangered
animals? That was nuts.
Debbie winked at
him. "Now do you understand why we
needed a roboticist on the project?"
"You mean you knew
this would happen?" said Alan.
"Well, French was
actually the one who was convinced from the start, but he's always been a bit
paranoid. I just humored him, but, as
usual, he got it right."
They sat on a couple of
chairs, smoking some old cigarettes and studying the poisoned rat until, five
minutes later, French returned.
"They're off the
coast, on a big speedboat or a small yacht," he reported, placing his
binoculars on the table next to the rat.
"Not even bothering to run without lights. They want us to know who ruined us. Those pricks. They know those waters are off limits to
boats. How much do you want to bet that
they’ll be gone by tomorrow? The Royal
Coastguard will never even know they were there."
"A boat, huh?"
said Alan. He thought he might have an
elegant if not particularly innovative solution to their problem, but would have
to work on it a little before asking their opinion.
Summer gave way to a relatively mild autumn,
but the rat attacks did not abate, falling instead into a sort of pattern. There would be a frenzy, five or six rats
appearing at once, followed by a couple of weeks of nothing, which had Alan in
a constant state of alert, nerves frayed, never sure when the next assault
would come, and, even worse, never completely certain that all the rats had
been accounted for after each one. That
was true torture, not knowing if, somewhere in the wilderness, one or more of
the rats were waiting to catch an unsuspecting bird or eat an unwatched egg.
Until, one day in June,
they found out. French entered the cabin
that morning following his dawn Kakapo watch and simply sat down in his old
leather armchair. Completely silent, he
looked out a window, toward the ocean where ARoE's boat
routinely reappeared. A single tear
rolled down his cheek.
Debbie and Alan exchanged
a look. She motioned that he should stay
where he was, and be silent. He nodded,
bowing to her greater familiarity with French's moods, and watched with
interest as she unobtrusively positioned herself in front of the door.
Fifteen minutes later,
French seemed to pull himself together, and sprang into action. Saying nothing, he opened the closet and
pulled out an old Steyr rifle complete with scope and
a box of bullets. He turned around, and
made it as far as the door, where Debbie stopped him.
"Where are you
going, French?" she
said, taking his hand in hers. It was
the hand holding the rifle.
"I'm going to kill
those bastards," he replied woodenly.
Even to Alan, who had never seen French act this way before, it was
obvious that he was in the grasp of a very deep sorrow, a sorrow that the
taciturn French could not adequately express any other way.
"What
happened?" she said, still standing in front of the door.
"They killed
Marty," he managed, in a cracked voice.
"Four rats."
Debbie looked
stricken. Marty had been a male Kakapo
living a full two miles from the beach who'd recently
began booming for a mate. That bird had
been one of the main hopes for the project.
French hid his face and
tried to push past her. Debbie stood
firm.
"No," she
said. "I won't let you do it. Even if you manage to hit one of them at this
range, the rest will simply come back with the authorities. All you'll achieve is to get yourself thrown
in jail forever, and the rest of the birds will be as good as dead."
"This is my
life. You know that. There's no way we can stop this rat invasion,
so they win. At least let me take some
of them with me!"
Debbie said nothing, but
she didn't move out of the way either.
The silence stretched out, growing tenser by the minute.
"There might be
another way." Alan, silent until
that moment, finally made his decision.
He had completed his new project a few weeks before, but had been too
afraid to bring it up. He thought they
would reject it out of hand, report him to the authorities, and throw him off
the project. Now he saw that he'd been
mistaken. These people truly believed.
French and Debbie looked
at him, saying nothing, but clearly surprised that he'd spoken. Taking this as a positive, or at least a
neutral sign, he quickly cleared his worktable and reached into his tool chest,
producing a foot-long tube with a rounded end on one side and what looked like
fins on the other.
"What's
that?" Debbie asked him, "It
looks like a stubby rocket."
Alan looked guilty, but
shrugged. "A
torpedo."
"What?" She didn't look happy, but French already
looked more animated, laying the gun down on the nearest chair and approaching Alan.
"Will it
work?" French said.
"I've tested it in
the breakers. It works. The payload is
fertilizer and some other stuff set off by a shotgun primer. Pretty basic and infallible."
"No," Debbie
said again. "You're talking about
killing human beings. You know as well
as I do that if you sink the boat out there, they won't make it ashore in those
currents."
Alan laughed. "I seriously doubt that this will sink a
boat that size. The payload might damage
it a little – hopefully enough to get them to leave – but that’s about it."
"Are you sure?"
Alan looked a little
uncomfortable. "Well, there’s
always a chance that it might go wrong, but I’d say ninety-five percent sure."
French took her hand in
his and looked into her eyes.
"Debbie, you know
what this project means to us. It's our
life. And you know that we can either
stop them or lose everything that we've worked towards for the last twenty
years. You know I'd do anything to save these
birds. Anything." He paused, another tear escaping. "But, even so, if you tell me, now, not
to do it, we won't do it."
Debbie stared at him,
started to speak once, twice, but said nothing.
Tears brimmed at the edges of her eyes as she opened her mouth one last
time, before finally looking away in silence.
French hugged her close
for a long time.
"Kid, how long do
you need to get it ready?" he asked.
"I can have the
batteries charged in six or seven hours."
"Well, then, tonight
you're going to get your chance to see if it works. If the kakapo survives on the mainland,
you'll be a large part of it, a very large part." He clapped Alan on the back.
Rose-colored dawn illuminated French’s
forehead, below which his two dark, expressionless eyes watched the scene on
the water. The boat was about a hundred meters
off the coast, easily visible from their chosen vantage point on the nearest
cliff.
They were all aware that
time was running short. The boat’s crew
would have to leave within the hour to avoid detection by the Coastguard’s
regular patrol.
Consequently, Alan found
himself typing furiously, getting the final systems online. The fact that he’d had to run up the steep
path from the beach, after placing the torpedo in the water wasn’t helping at
all. He tried to regularize his
breathing enough to be precise with the keyboard.
The torpedo wasn’t
equipped with a camera and lacked a contact fuse, so he would have to guide it
by GPS and sight then trigger it when he felt it would be most effective. Fortunately, the dawn was bright enough – he
could clearly discern the white tube bobbing through the swells of the dark
sea.
There. The last command was keyed in. They could now watch the torpedo approach the
motionless boat. Alan swallowed, throat dry, armpits moist, as the scene
unfolded. He inputted small course
corrections continuously, hoping nothing went wrong, and that he could guide
the weapon to its target without losing precious time in turning back around
for a second run. The future of French's
kakapo could, conceivably, depend on his aim.
To his immense relief,
the torpedo emerged from the savage breakers still heading in the right
direction. Now, despite the strong
current pulling towards the left, he was confident that he could close with the
target on the first try. There were less
than thirty meters to go, now.
Twenty. Ten. The torpedo was barely visible at this
distance. He waited a couple more
seconds, armed the detonator, and waited.
When the torpedo stopped
moving both in the GPS and visually, he pressed the switch. Almost immediately, they saw a stubby geyser
erupt amidships on the starboard side of the yacht, followed instantly by the
muted thud of the explosion.
French looked a little
disappointed by the lack of any impressive fireball or other large display, but
said nothing. He simply studied the
effect through his binoculars.
"There’s
a smudge and a litte tear in the side," he
remarked noncommittally. "Not too
severe, but they’ll have to head all the way back to port to deal with it. I think we've bought some time."
Almost as if the boat’s
crew had heard him, at least two people appeared on deck to inspect the damage,
immediately followed by the sound of the engine coming to life. The boat began to move away from their
position.
"Perfect," French
said, satisfaction reaching his eyes for the first time.
Alan sighed. Relief,
combined with the lack of sleep, combined to make him sag. He was happy.
At the very least, the ARoE people would know
that they’d have to be more careful in any future covert operations.
Debbie whimpered. Alan turned to see her pointing, a stricken
look on her face, towards the sea.
The boat was listing slightly,
but that wasn’t the reason for her worry.
The previous two figures could be seen on the deck, except that now they
flailed at something unseen. Another person could be seen splashing in the
water.
"What’s happening?"
Alan asked.
French raised the
binoculars. "The people on deck
seem to be under attack from something. Some kind of small brown things. Lots of them."
Another of the figures
jumped into the water.
"They’ll drown if they
don’t get back on the boat. That’s not a
sea on which you want to take a swim!" Debbie exclaimed, gripping French’s
arm. "What’s happening?"
"The
rats!" Alan said, suddenly understanding. "The impact must have sprung their
enclosure and you told me they might be bred for additional aggression. They must have panicked and attacked the
crew!"
The last human figure
jumped overboard.
"Can’t we do
anything?" Debbie asked, agonized.
"No
way. We’ll never make it
in time. Look, one of them has gone
under already, and they’re being pulled towards the rocks. And the boat’s going, too."
"But we have to try!"
"I’ll call the
Coastguard, but I think it’s already too late." He chuckled.
"Fitting, in a way, don’t you think? If they hadn’t been so hell-bent on killing
the kakapos, they’d be at home with their families instead of on their way to
the rocks."
"How can you be so
callous?" Debbie asked. Her pallor spoke volumes about what she was
feeling. "Those are human beings
out there. People with dreams, lives,
families! And we killed them!"
French drew back for a
moment, abashed and shocked at her outburst.
Still, when Debbie covered her face with her hands and sobbed, he put
his arms around her once more. She
turned her faced into his shoulder and clung tightly to him as if she were
afraid of falling off the earth.
"We didn’t kill
them, their own rats killed them. You
have to remember that. Look, see? The boat
is still perfectly afloat."
He pushed Debbie away and
looked into her eyes, worry lines having already erased his earlier excitement.
"I’m going to call
the Coastguard, to see if they can actually rescue someone, but I don’t want
you to get your hopes up. They were true
bastards, but you're right, Debbie.
You're right. They are still people."
He turned and walked stiffly
down the hill, leaving the stricken Debbie and Alan alone in the pale dawn
light.
Off in the distance, a
kakapo boomed majestically. One last call before going to bed for the day.