Chapter 8
THE PLACE FIXED ON for the Hunt-and-be-Hunted was not far above a stream in a little aspen copse. On reaching the copse, Levin led Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already quite free from snow. He went back himself to a double birch tree on the other side, and leaning his gun on the fork of a dead lower branch, he took off his full overcoat, fastened his belt again, and worked his arms to see if they were free.
The sun was setting behind a thick forest, and in the glow of sunset the birch trees, dotted about in the aspen copse, stood out clearly with their hanging twigs, and their buds swollen almost to bursting. Levin sighed with contentment, for the Hunt-and-be-Hunted was to him the ideal way to spend a day: shooting at grackles and geese with one’s old-fashioned cartridge rifle, while simultaneously trying to escape the claws of the heat-seeking, man-chasing mechanical monsters called Huntbears.
How, Levin had long wondered, had hunting ever held the slightest enchantment before the introduction of the Huntbears?
From the thickest parts of the copse, where the snow still remained, came the faint sound of narrow, winding threads of water running away. Tiny birds twittered, and now and then fluttered from tree to tree. They heard the rustle of last year’s leaves, stirred by the thawing of the earth and the growth of the grass. Small Stiva optimized his aural and optical sensors, rotating his head unit nervously around and around; he loathed the Hunt-and-be-Hunted, and envied Socrates, who had been left at the estate doing bookkeeping.
“Imagine! One can hear and see the grass growing!” Levin said, noticing a wet, slate-colored aspen leaf moving beside a blade of young grass. Oblonsky laughed gaily at this observation, and then Small Stiva beeped shrilly six times, the birds fled in one urgent fluttering cloud, and the Huntbear thundered into the copse. The huge mechanized bear, over eight feet high, crashed toward them with great, lumbering steps, opening its gaping mouth to display two rows of oversize teeth. Levin, even as he leveled his rifle at the thing, admired the simple but effective craftsmanship; the Bear looked not so much like a real bear as like a child’s rendering of a bear, with massively exaggerated paws and fangs.
Oblonsky, rattled, fired first but wildly, and most of his cartridge rounds ended up in the surrounding trees, or tinged harmlessly off the Huntbear’s thick groznium legs. While the Huntbear advanced another crashing step toward them, Small Stiva skittered off into the cover of the undergrowth.
Levin, calmly taking aim at the thrashing beast, noticed for the first time that the Huntbear was accompanied by a cub—a nice naturalistic touch. He would try to remember to thank his groundskeeper for providing an especially delightful day’s Hunt-and-be-Hunted.
Levin shot once and missed. The Huntbear swatted Oblonsky with the back of its paw, hard enough to knock him down but not to kill; Oblonsky cried out in genuine terror—like most first-time Hunt-and-be-Hunters, he forgot in the heat of the action that Huntbears were programmed with the Iron Laws and so could never do real harm to humans.
Levin shot again and scored a clean hit in the belly of the beast—the ursine robot monster reared back in simulated pain. At that moment, a hawk flew high over a forest far away with a slow sweep of its wings, and another flew with exactly the same motion in the same direction and vanished. The Huntbear paused in its rampage, its sensors distracted by the graceful black swoop of the hawk, and Levin took his opportunity: he fired his rifle exactly four times, with deadly precision—bang, bang, bang, bang—alternating, one shot to bring down a hawk, one shot in the right eye of the Bear, one for the other hawk, one for the other eye.
Birds twittered more and more loudly and busily in the neighboring thicket. An owl hooted not far off. The Bear, its brain circuits shattered by Levin’s shots, clattered to the ground like a fallen tree. Oblonsky hesitantly rose to his feet, laughing with easy good humor at his momentary panic, just as Small Stiva emerged from the bush clutching both dead hawks with the pincer of a single end-effector.
* * *
The Hunt-and-be-Hunted was capital. Stepan Arkadyich shot two more birds and Levin two, of which one was not found. It began to get dark. Venus, bright and silvery, shone with her soft light low in the west behind the birch trees, and Levin gazed happily at the planet with a loving look, wondering why the sight, which he had seen so many times before, should inspire in him such a sense of pleasure and calm.
The snipe had ceased flying; but Levin resolved to stay a little longer, till Venus, which he saw below a branch of birch, should be above it. Then Venus had risen above the branch, yet still he waited.
“Isn’t it time to go home?” said Stepan Arkadyich.
It was quite still now in the copse, and not a bird was stirring.
“Let’s stay a little while,” answered Levin.
“As you like.”
They were standing now about fifteen paces from one another.
“Stiva!” said Levin unexpectedly. “How is it you don’t tell me whether your sister-in-law’s married yet, or when she’s going to be?”
Levin felt so resolute and serene that no answer, he fancied, could affect him. But he had never dreamed of what Stepan Arkadyich replied.
“She’s never thought of being married, and isn’t thinking of it; but she’s very ill, and the doctors have sent her into orbit around Venus.”
Venus. Levin stared up again at the distant body, and felt its tug upon his heart.
“They’re positively afraid she may not live.”
“What!” cried Levin. “Very ill? What is wrong with her? How has she . . .?”
Before he could inquire further into her condition, at that very instant both suddenly heard a shrill whistle which, as it were, smote on their ears; it was Small Stiva, bleating out the alarm again. Both suddenly seized their guns and two flashes gleamed as they pumped a combined seventeen rounds into the tiny groznium body of the Huntbear cub.
They stood together over the smoldering heap of the fallen Huntbear, flushed with pleasure at the unexpected victory, each humorously blaming the other for having forgotten about the cub.
“Splendid! Together!” cried Levin. Oh, yes, what was it that was unpleasant? he wondered. Yes, Kitty’s ill. . . . Well, it can’t be helped; I’m very sorry, he thought.
* * *
They tromped back to Levin’s estate, and did not see that, as soon as they turned their backs, a head like that of a worm, only closer in size to a dog’s head, emerged from the rough forest ground as if from a tunnel; and they did not see this worm head open a grotesque, gaping mouth and suck up the shattered groznium skeleton of the Huntbear cub, before disappearing again beneath the earth’s surface.