The lion turns to fight. Long Tracks swings one good swipe and then the lion is on him. They're wrestling; Long Tracks may have dropped his w'tsai. I can't see Waldo.
The lion wrenches loose and I have a clear shot. I fire at a point just behind his shoulder.
The lion goes down.
* * *
"Nothing in my sectry lists the lion as a cursorial hunter," says Kash-First.
It's dawn, and we're moving. Waldo's dead. Wave Rider is still breathing. He's swollen and discolored over most of his body, and his ribs bend inward where they should not. Kash-First is lucid and walking. His voice has a breathy, painful hiccup in it that doesn't get through the translator.
I'm not in the mood for a fight. I tell Kash-First, "Every hunter knows of a lion that stalked someone for days at a time and killed him at the last."
"Even I can't tell you that this one had a different smell. But do you know that this is the same lion that tore up Waldo's scalp?"
And stalked him ever since, until last night's kill. "Who else? Any other lion would take Wave Rider. Wave Rider couldn't defend himself. Lions are lazy. Waldo could fight back."
"He didn't have the chance."
"No." This time the lion bit into his skull and dragged him forty meters before Long Tracks caught him. My bullet tracked through one lung and his heart: a good shot.
Of course the trophy head won't be worth any more than the rest of our heads, which are all going to be ruined because the kzinti want the ears. We've got the holograms, though.
Long Tracks offered me one of the lion's ears. He claims the other himself. He won't talk to me.
* * *
And it's over.
We reached the transfer booth in four hours. We were at the Nairobi Spaceport just that fast, with access to Starsieve's lander's surgery ten minutes later. I pretended to help get Wave Rider into the cavity, but truly, he's too heavy for me.
"Take the ear," Kash-First said through his translator. "Long Track won't forgive you if you don't. You used your own familiar weapon in a personal hunt. He'll see that soon or late."
"How are you?" I asked.
"I can use some medical attention." But he has to wait. He's plugged into the peripherals, but he'll need the intensive care cavity when it's through with Wave Rider.
I said, "It was not my intention to lead you into such a disaster as this."
He shrugged, and winced. He sits bent over around the puncture wound. "A fusion bomb can kill any number of elephants. We use the w'tsai. Killing is not the point. Kzin against the elements, that is the point."
Truly, I agree. But maybe I've missed the point myself. There was an accident—
* * *
An hour after we set out this morning, we were trekking into a gully. Kashtiyee-First was on the float plate that held Waldo's corpse, guiding the other that carried Wave Rider, and they just floated over the depression. Long Tracks got disgusted with my slowness and sprinted up the other side to meet his companions. I wondered if I was hurting them by slowing them.
They waited in a copse of trees. They were talking as I approached. They hadn't noticed me. My translator began picking up their speech.
Long Tracks: "It would be as easy for LE Bannett to die as for Waldo, or you. This insanely dangerous land could take him at the last. A lion?"
Kash-First: "Your teeth don't leave the same marks as a lion's."
I stopped thinking about revealing myself. I used my mag specs to watch Long Tracks pick up the lion's head. He clacked the jaws a couple of times. "Bite him with this."
Kash-First said, "LE Bannett has kept every promise expressed or implied."
Long Tracks was silent.
Kash-First said, "Recall why we came. We can hunt anywhere. Have we learned more of the human state? Can we give Prisst-Captain any hint of what our ancestors faced, to be so battered and humiliated in war after war?"
"Fool's errand. We have had only one human to study. He is far from typical. He kills as easily as we do, and revels in it."
"Yes, the human is not interesting. But the rest? What of Africa? Do we finally know the horrors this species faced in the ages before it expanded across its world?"
"Ur?"
"And then came back to hunt."
THE END
