“John, I must thank you. I have never done this before. It is wonderful,” he said sincerely.
“It’s Nature, man. It’s the way things were always supposed to be. Come on, Mystic,” he said to his mount, speeding up a little more, looking back to see that Popov could handle the increased pace.
It wasn’t easy to synchronize his body movements in pace with the horse, but gradually Popov managed it, and soon pulled up alongside.
“So, this is how Americans settled the West?”
Killgore nodded. “Yep. Once this was covered with buffalo, three or four great herds, as far as the eye could see . . .
“Hunters did it, did it all in a period of about ten years, using single-shot Sharps buffalo guns mainly. They killed them for the hides to make blankets and stuff, for the meat-sometimes they killed ’em just for the tongues. Slaughtered ’em like Hitler did with the Jews.” Killgore shook his head. “One of the greatest crimes America ever committed, Dmitriy, just killed ’em just ’cause they were in the way. But they’ll be coming back,” he added, wondering how long it would take. Fifty years-he’d have a fair chance of seeing it then. Maybe a hundred years? They’d be letting the wolves and barren-grounds grizzly come back, too, but predators would come back slower. They didn’t breed as rapidly as their prey animals. He wanted to see the prairie again as it had once been. So did many other Project members, and some of them wanted to live in tepees, like the Indians had done. But that, he thought, was a little bit extreme-political ideas taking the place of common sense.
“Hey, John!” a voice called from a few hundred yards behind. Both men turned to see a figure galloping up to them. In a minute or so, he was recognizable.
“Kirk! When did you get out here?”
“Flew in last night,” Maclean answered. He stopped his horse and shook hands with Killgore. “What about you?”
“Last week, with the Binghamton crew. We closed that operation down and figured it was time to pull up stakes.”
“All of them?” Maclean asked in a way that got Popov’s attention. All of who?
“Yep.” Killgore nodded soberly.
“Schedule work out?” Maclean asked next, dismissing whatever it was that had upset him before.
“Almost perfectly on the projections. We, uh, helped the last ones along.”
“Oh.” Maclean looked down for a second, feeling bad, briefly, for the women he’d recruited. But only briefly. “So it’s moving forward?”
“Yes,. it is, Kirk. The Olympics start day after tomorrow, and then. . .”
“Yeah. Then it starts for real.”
“Hello,” Popov said, after a second. It was as though Killgore had forgotten he was there.
“Oh, sorry, Dmitriy. Kirk Maclean, this is Dmitriy Popov. John sent him out to us a couple days ago.”
“Howdy, Dmitriy.” Handshakes were exchanged. “Russian?” Maclean asked.
“Yes.” A nod. “I work directly for Dr. Brightling. And You?”
“I’m a small part of the Project,” Maclean admitted.
“Kirk’s a biochemist and environmental engineer,” Killgore explained. “Also so good-looking that we had him do another little thing for us,” he teased. “But that’s over now. So, what broke you loose so early, Kirk?”
“Remember Mary Bannister?”
“Yeah, what about her?”
“The FBI asked me if I knew her. I kicked it around with Henriksen, and he decided to send me out a little early. I take it she’s. . .”
Killgore nodded matter-of-factly. “Yeah, last week.”
“So `A’ works?”
“Yes, it does. And so does `B.’ ”
“That’s good. I got my `B’ shot already. “Popov thought back to his injection at Killgore’s hands. There had been a capital B on the vial label, hadn’t there? And what was this about the FBI? These two were talking freely, but it was like a foreign language-no, it was the speech of insiders, using internal words and phrases as engineers and physicians did, well, as intelligence officers did as well. It was part of Popov’s fieldcraft to remember whatever was said in front of him, however distant from his understanding, and he took it all in, despite his befuddled expression.
Killgore led his horse off again. “First time out, Kirk?”
“First time on a horse in months. I had a deal with a guy in New York City, but I never really had time to do it enough. My legs and ass are gonna be sore tomorrow, John.” The bio-engineer laughed.
“Yeah, but it’s a good kind of sore.” Killgore laughed as well. He’d had a horse back in Binghamton, and he hoped that the family that kept it for him would let him out when the time came, so that Stormy would be able to feed himself . . . but then Stormy was a gelding, and therefore biologically irrelevant to the entire world except as a consumer of grass. Too bad, the physician thought. He’d been a fine riding horse.
Maclean stood in his stirrups, looking around. He could turn and look back at the Project buildings, but before him, and to left and right, little more than rolling prairie. Someday they’d have to burn down all the houses and farm buildings. They just cluttered the view.
“Look out, John,” he said, seeing some danger forward and pointing at the holes.
“What is this?” Popov asked.
“Prairie dogs,” Killgore said, letting his horse slow to a slow walk. “Wild rodents, they dig holes and make underground cities, called prairie-dog towns. If a horse steps into one, well, it’s bad for the horse. But if they walk slow, they can avoid the holes.”
“Rodents? Why don’t you deal with them? Shoot them, poison them? If they can hurt a horse, then-”
“Dmitriy, they’re part of Nature, okay? They belong here, even more than we do,” Maclean explained.
“But a horse is-” Expensive, he thought, as the doctor cut him off.
“Not part of Nature, not really,” Killgore went on. “I love ’em, too, but strictly speaking, they don’t belong out here either.”
“The hawks and other raptors will come back and control the prairie dogs,” Maclean said. “No chicken farmers will be hurting them anymore. Man, I love watching them work.”
“You bet. They’re nature’s own smart bomb,” Killgore agreed. “That was the real sport of kings, training a hawk to hunt off your fist for you. I might do some of that myself in a few years. I always liked the gyrfalcon.”
“The all-white one. Yeah, noble bird, that one,” Maclean observed.
They think this area will be greatly changed in a few years, Popov thought. But what could make that happen?
“So, tell me,” the Russian asked. “How will this all look in five years?”
“Much better,” Killgore said. “Some buffalo will be back. We might even have to keep them away from our wheat.”
“Herd ’em with the Hammers?” Maclean wondered.
“Or helicopters, maybe,” the physician speculated. “We’ll have a few of those to measure the populations. Mark Holtz is talking about going to Yellowstone and capturing a few, then trucking them down here to help jump-start the herd. You know Mark?” MacLean shook his head. “No, never met him.”
“He’s a big-picture thinker on the ecological side, but he’s not into interfering with Nature. Just helping Her along some.”
“What are we going to do about the dogs?” Kirk asked, meaning domestic pets suddenly released into nature, where they’d become feral, killers of game.
“We’ll just have to see,” Killgore said. “Most won’t be big enough to hurt mature animals, and a lot will be neutered, so they won’t breed. Maybe we’ll have to shoot some. Ought not to be too hard.”
“Some won’t like that. You know the score-we’re not supposed to do anything but watch. I don’t buy that. If we’ve screwed up the ecosystem, we ought to be able to fix the parts we broke, some of them anyway.”
“I agree. We’ll have to vote on that, though. Hell, I want to hunt, and they’re going to have to vote on that, too,” Killgore announced with a distasteful grimace.
“No shit? What about Jim Bridger? Except for trapping beaver, what did he do that was so damned wrong?”
“Vegans, they’re extremists, Kirk. Their way or the highway, y’know?”
“Oh, fuck ’em. Tell ’em we’re not designed to be herbivores, for Christ’s sake. That’s just pure science.” The prairie-dog town was a small one, they saw, as they passed the last of the dirt bull’s eyed holes.
“And what will your neighbors think of all this?” Popov asked, with a lighthearted smile. What the hell were these people talking about?
“What neighbors?” Killgore asked.
What neighbors? And it wasn’t that which bothered Popov. It was that the reply was rhetorical in nature. But then the doctor changed the subject. “Sure is a nice morning for a ride.”
What neighbors? Popov thought again. They could see the roofs of farmhouses and buildings not ten kilometers away, well lit by the morning sun. What did they mean, what neighbors? They spoke of a radiant future with wild animals everywhere, but not of people. Did they plan to purchase all the nearby farms? Even Horizon Corporation didn’t have that much money, did it? This was a settled, civilized area. The farms nearby were large prosperous ones owned by people of comfortable private means. Where would they go? Why would they leave? And yet again, the question leaped into Popov’s mind. What is this all about?