Fortune Hunter

Poul Anderson

After cleaning up indoors, I stepped outside for a look at the evening. I’d only moved here a few days ago. Before, I’d been down in the woods. Now I was above timberline, and there’d just been time to make my body at home—reassemble the cabin and its furnishings, explore the area, deploy the pickups, let lungs acquire a taste for thinner air. My soul was still busy settling in.

I missed sun-flecks spattered like gold on soft shadow-brown duff, male ruggedness and woman-sweet odor of pines and their green that speared into heaven, a brook that glittered and sang, bird calls, a splendidly antlered wapiti who’d become my friend and took food from my hand. (He was especially fond of cucumber peels. I dubbed him Charlie.) You don’t live six months in a place, from the blaze of autumn through the iron and white of winter, being reborn with the land when spring breathes over it—you don’t do this and not keep some of that place ever afterward inside your bones.

Nevertheless, I’d kept remembering high country, and when Jo Modzeleski said she’d failed to get my time extended further, I decided to go up for what remained of it. That was part of my plan; she loved the whole wilderness as much as I did, but she kept her heart on its peaks and they ought to help make her mood right. However, I myself was happy to return.

And as I walked out of the cabin, past my skeletal flitter, so that nothing human-made was between me and the world, suddenly the whole of me was again altogether belonging where I was.

This base stood on an alpine meadow. Grass grew thick and moist, springy underfoot, daisy-starred. Here and there bulked boulders the size of houses, grayness scored by a glacier which had once gouged out the little lake rippling and sparkling not far away; a sign to me that I also was included in eternity. Everywhere around, the Wind River Mountains lifted snow crowns and the darker blues of their rock into a dizzy-ingly tall heaven where an eagle hovered. He caught on his wings the sunlight which slanted out of the west. Those beams seemed to fill the chilliness, turning it somehow molten; and the heights were alive with shadows.

I smelled growth, more austere than in the forest but not the less strong. A fish leaped, I saw the brief gleam and an instant later, very faintly through quietness, heard the water clink. Though there was no real breeze, my face felt the air kiss it.

I buttoned my mackinaw, reached for smoking gear, and peered about. A couple of times already, I’d spied a bear. I knew better than to try a Charlie-type relationship with such a beast, but surely we could share the territory amicably; and if I could learn enough of his ways to plant pickups where they could record his life—or hers, in which case she’d be having cubs—

No. You’re bound back to civilization at the end of this week. Remember?

Oh, but I may be returning.

As if in answer to my thought, I heard a whirr aloft. It grew, till another flitter hove into sight. Jo was taking me up on my invitation at an earlier hour than I’d expected when I said, “Come for dinner about sundown.” Earlier than I’d hoped? My heart knocked. I stuck pipe and tobacco pouch back in my pockets and walked fast to greet her.

She landed and sprang out of the bubble before the airpad motors were silent. She always had been quick and graceful on her feet. Otherwise she wasn’t much to look at: short, stocky, pug nose, pale round eyes under close-cropped black hair. For this occasion she’d left off the ranger’s uniform in favor of an iridescent clingsuit; but it couldn’t have done a lot for her even if she had known how to wear it.

“Welcome,” I said, took both her hands, and gave her my biggest smile.

“Hi.” She sounded breathless. Color came and went across her cheeks. “How are you?”

“Okay. Sad at leaving, naturally.” I turned the smile wry, so as not to seem self-pitiful.

She glanced away. “You’ll be going back to your wife, though.”

Don’t push too hard. “You’re ahead of yourself, Jo. I meant to have drinks and snacks ready in advance. Now you’ll have to come in and watch me work.”

“I’ll help.”

“Never, when you’re my guest. Sit down, relax.” I took her arm and guided her toward the cabin.

She uttered an uncertain laugh. “Are you afraid I’ll get in your way, Pete? No worries. I know these knockdown units—I’d better, after three years—”

I was here for four, and that followed half a dozen years in and out of other wildernesses, before I decided that this was the one I wanted to record in depth, it being for me the loveliest of the lovely.

“—and they only have one practical place to stow any given kind of thing,” she was saying. Then she stopped, which made me do likewise, turned her head from side to side, drank deep of air and sunglow. “Please, don’t let me hurry you. This is such a beautiful evening. You were out to enjoy it.”

Unspoken: And you haven’t many left, Pete. The documentation project ended officially last year. You’re the last of the very few mediamen who got special permission to stay on and finish their sequences; and now, no more stalling, no more extra time; the word is Everybody Out.

My unspoken reply: Except you rangers. A handful of you, holding degrees in ecology and soil biotics and whatnot—a handful who won in competition against a horde—does that give you the right to lord it over all this?

“Well, yes,” I said, and segued to: “I’ll enjoy it especially in present company.”

“Thank you, kind sir.” She failed to sound cheery.

I squeezed her arm. “You know, I am going to miss you, Jo. Miss you like hell.” This past year, as my plan grew within me, I’d been cultivating her. Not just card games and long conversations over the sensiphone; no in—the-flesh get-togethers for hikes, rambles, picnics, fishing, birdwatching, deerwatching, starwatching. A mediaman gets good at the cultivation of people, and although this past decade had given me scant need to use that skill, it hadn’t died. As easy as breathing. I could show interest in her rather banal remarks, her rather sappy sentimental opinions… “Come see me when you get a vacation.”

“Oh, I’ll—I’ll call you up … now and then ... if Marie won’t…

mind.”

“I mean come in person. Holographic image, stereo sound, even scent and temperature and every other kind of circuit a person might pay for the use of—a phone isn’t the same as having a friend right there.”

She winced. “You’ll be in the city.”

“It isn’t so bad,” I said in my bravest style. “Pretty fair-sized apartment, a lot bigger than that plastic shack yonder. Soundproofed. Filtered and conditioned air. The whole conurb fully screened and policed. Armored vehicles available when you sally forth.”

“And a mask for my nose and mouth!” She nearly gagged.

“No, no, that hasn’t been needed for a long while. They’ve gotten the dust, monoxide, and carcinogens down to a level, at least in my city, which—”

“The stinks. The tastes. No, Pete, I’m sorry, I’m no delicate flower but the visits to Boswash I make in line of duty are the limit of what I can take… after getting to know this land.”

“I’m thinking of moving into the country myself,” I said. “Rent a cottage in an agrarea, do most of my business by phone, no need to go downtown except when I get an assignment to document something there.”

She grimaced. “I often think the agrareas are worse than any ’tropolis.”

“Huh?” It surprised me that she could still surprise me.

“Oh, cleaner, quieter, less dangerous, residents not jammed elbow to elbow, true,” she admitted. “But at least those snarling, grasping, frenetic city folk have a certain freedom, a certain… life to them. It may be the life of a ratpack, but it’s real, it has a bit of structure and spontaneity and—In the hinterlands, not only nature is regimented. The people are.”

Well, I don’t know how else you could organize things to feed a world population of fifteen billion.

“All right,” I said. “I understand. But this is a depressing subject. Let’s saunter for a while. I’ve found some gentian blooming.”

“So early in the season? Is it in walking distance? I’d like to see.”

“Too far for now, I’m afraid. I’ve been tramping some mighty long days. However, let me show you the local blueberry patch. It should be well worth a visit, come late summer.”

As I took her arm again, she said, in her awkward fashion, “You’ve become an expert, haven’t you, Pete?”

“Hard to avoid that,” I grunted. “Ten years, collecting sensie material on the Wilderness System.”

“Ten years… I was in high school when you began. I only knew the regular parks, where we stood in line on a paved path to see a redwood or a geyser, and we reserved swimming rights a month in advance. While you—” Her fingers closed around mine, hard and warm. “It doesn’t seem fair to end your stay.”

“Life never was fair.”

Too damn much human life. Too little of any other kind. And we have to keep a few wildernesses a necessary reserve for what’s left of the planet’s ecology; a source of knowledge for researchers who’re trying to learn enough about that ecology to shore it up before it collapses altogether; never mentioned, but present in every thinking head, the fact that if collapse does come, the wilderness will be Earth’s last seedbeds of hope.

“I mean,” Jo plodded, “of course areas like this were being destroyed by crowds—loved to death, as somebody wrote—so the only thing to do was close them to everybody except a few caretakers and scientists, and that was politically impossible unless ‘everybody’ meant everybody.” Ah, yes, she was back to her habit of thumbing smooth-worn cliches. “And after all, the sensie documentaries that artists like you have been making, they’ll be available and—” The smoothness vanished. “You can’t come back, Pete! Not ever again!”

Her fingers remembered where they were and let go of me. Mine followed them and squeezed, a measured gentleness. Meanwhile my pulse fluttered. It was as well that words didn’t seem indicated at the moment, because my mouth was dry.

A mediaman should be more confident. But such a God damn lot was riding on this particular bet. I’d gotten Jo to care about me, not just in the benevolent way of her colleagues, isolated from mankind so they can afford benevolence, but about me, this Pete-atom that wanted to spend the rest of its flickering days in the Wind River Mountains. Only how deeply did she care?

We walked around the lake. The sun dropped under the peaks—for minutes, the eastern snows were afire—and shadows welled up. I heard an owl hoot to his love. In royal blue, Venus kindled. The air sharpened, making blood run faster.

“Br-r-r!” Jo laughed. “Now I do want that drink.”

I couldn’t see her features through the dusk. The first stars stood forth infinitely clear. But Jo was a blur, a warmth, a solidness, no more. She might almost have been Marie.

If she had been! Marie was beautiful and bright and sexy and—Sure, she took lovers while I was gone for months on end; we’d agreed that the reserves were my mistresses. She’d had no thought for them on my returns… Oh, if only we could have shared it all!

Soon the sky would hold more stars than darkness, the Milky Way would be a white cataract, the lake would lie aglow with them, and when

Jupiter rose there would be a perfect glade across the water. I’d stayed out half of last night to watch that.

Already the shining was such that we didn’t need a penflash to find the entrance to my cabin. The insulation layer yielded under my touch. We stepped through, I zipped the door and closed the main switch, fluoros awoke as softly as the ventilation.

Jo was correct; those portables don’t lend themselves to individuality. (She had a permanent cabin, built of wood and full of things dear to her.) Except for a few books and the like, my one room was strictly functional. True, the phone could bring me the illusion of almost anything or anybody, anywhere in the world, that I might want. We city folk learn to travel light. This interior was well proportioned, pleasingly tinted, snug; a step outside was that alpine meadow. What more did I need?

Out of hard-earned habit, I checked the nucleo gauge—ample power—before taking dinner from the freezer and setting it to cook. Thereafter I fetched nibblies, rum, and fruit juice, and mixed drinks the way Jo liked them. She didn’t try to help after all, but settled back into the airchair. Neither of us had said much while we walked. I’d expected chatter out of her—a bit nervous, a bit too fast and blithe—once we were here. Instead, her stocky frame hunched in its mother-of-pearl suit that wasn’t meant for it, and she stared at the hands in her lap.

No longer cold, I shucked my mackinaw and carried her drink over to her. “Revelry, not reverie!” I ordered. She took it. I clinked glasses. My other hand being then free, I reached thumb and forefinger to twitch her lips at the corners. “Hey you, smile. This is supposed to be a jolly party.”

“Is it?” The eyes she raised to me were afloat in tears.

“Sure, I hate to go—”

“Where’s Marie’s picture?”

That rocked me back. I hadn’t expected so blunt a question. “Why, uh—” Okay. Events are moving faster than you’d planned on, Peter. Move with them. I took a swallow, squared my shoulders, and said manfully: “I didn’t want to unload my troubles on you, Jo. The fact is, Marie and I have broken up. Nothing’s left but the formalities.”

“What?”

Her mouth is open, her look lost in mine; she spills some of her drink and doesn’t notice—Have I really got it made? This soon?

I shrugged. “Yeah. The notice of intent to dissolve relationship arrived yesterday. I’d seen it coming, of course. She’d grown tired of waiting around.”

“Oh, Pete!” She reached for me.

I was totally aware—walls, crowded shelves, night in a window.

murmur and warm gusting from the heat unit, monitor lamp on the radionic oven and meat fragrances seeping out of it, this woman whom I must learn to desire—and thought quickly that at the present stage of things, I’d better pretend not to notice her gesture. “No sympathy cards,” I said in a flat tone. “To be quite honest, I’m more relieved than otherwise.”

“I thought—” she whispered. “I thought you two were happy.”

Which we have been, my dear, Marie and I, though a sophisticated mediaman does suspect that considerable of our happiness, as opposed to contentment, has been due to my long absences this past decade. They’ve added spice. That’s something you’ll always lack, whatever happens, Jo. Yet a man can’t live only on spices.

“It didn’t last,” I said as per plan. “She’s found someone more compatible. I’m glad of that.”

“You, Pete?”

“I’ll manage. C’mon, drink your drink. I insist that we be merry.”

She gulped. I’ll try.”

After a minute: “You haven’t even anyone to come home to!”

“ ‘Home’ doesn’t mean a lot to a city man, Jo. One apartment is like another; and we move through a big total of ’em in a lifetime.” The liquor must have touched me a bit, since I rushed matters: “Quite different from, say, these mountains. Each patch of them is absolutely unique. A man could spend all his years getting to know a single one, growing into it—Well.”

I touched a switch and the armchair expanded, making room for me to settle down beside her. “Care for some background music?” I asked.

“No.” Her gaze dropped—she had stubby lashes—and she blushed—blotchily—but she got her words out with a stubbornness I had come to admire. Somebody who had that kind of guts wouldn’t be too bad a partner. “At least, I’d not hear it. This is just about my last chance to talk… really talk… to you, Pete. Isn’t it?”

“I hope not.” More passion in that voice, boy. “Lord, I hope not!”

“We have had awfully good times together. My colleagues are fine, you know, but—” She blinked hard. “You’ve been special.”

“Same as you to me.”

She was shivering a bit, meeting my eyes now, lips a bare few centimeters away. Since she seldom drank alcohol, I guessed that what I’d more or less forced on her had gotten a good strong hold, under these circumstances. Remember, she’s no urbanite who’ll hop into bed and scarcely remember it two days later. She went directly from a small town to a tough university to here, and may actually be a virgin. However, you’ve worked toward this moment for months, Pete, old chum. Get started!

It was the gentlest kiss I think I have ever taken.

“I’ve been, well, afraid to speak,” I murmured into her hair, which held an upland sunniness. “Maybe I still am. Only I don’t, don’t, don’t want to lose you, Jo.”

Half crying, half laughing, she came back to my mouth. She didn’t really know how, but she held herself hard against me, and I thought: May she end up sleeping with me, already this night?

No matter, either way. What does count is, the Wilderness Administration allows qualified husband—and-wife teams to live together on the job; and she’s a ranger and I, being skilled in using monitoring devices, would be an acceptable research assistant.

And then-n-n:

I didn’t know, I don’t know to this day what went wrong. We’d had two or three more drinks, and a good deal of joyous tussling, and her clothes were partly off her, and dinner was beginning to scorch in the oven when

I was too hasty she was too awkward and/or backward-holding, and I got impatient and she felt it.

I breathed out one of those special words which people say to each other only, and she being a bit terrified anyway decided it wasn’t mere habit-accident but I was pretending she was Marie because in fact my eyes were shut she wasn’t as naive as she, quite innocently, had led me to believe, and in one of those moments which (contrary to fantasy) are forever coming upon lovers asked herself, “Hey, what the hell is really going on?” or whatever. It makes no difference. Suddenly she wanted to phone Marie.

“If, if, if things are as you say, Pete, she’ll be glad to learn—”

“Wait a minute! Wait one damn minute! Don’t you trust me?”

“Oh, Pete, darling, of course I do, but—”

“But nothing.” I drew apart to register offense.

Instead of coining after me, she asked, as quietly as the night outside: “Don’t you trust me?”

Never mind. A person can’t answer a question like that. We both tried, and shouldn’t have. All I truly remember is seeing her out the door. A smell of charred meat pursued us. Beyond the cabin, the air was cold and altogether pure, sky wild with stars, peaks aglow. I watched her stumble to her flitter. The galaxy lit her path. She cried the whole way. But she went.

However disappointed, I felt some relief, too. It would have been a shabby trick to play on Marie, who had considerable love invested in me. And our apartment is quite pleasant, once it’s battened down against the surroundings; I belong to the fortunate small minority. We had an appropriate reunion. She even babbled about applying for a childbearing permit. I kept enough sense to switch that kind of talk immediately.

Next evening there was a rally which we couldn’t well get out of attending. The commissioners may be right as far as most citizens go. “A sensiphone, regardless of how many circuits are tuned in, is no substitute for the physical togetherness of human beings uniting under their leaders for our glorious mass purposes.” We, though, didn’t get anything out of it except headaches, ears ringing from the cadenced cheers, lungs full of air that had passed through thousands of other lungs, and skins which felt greasy as well as gritty. Homebound, we encountered smog so thick it confused our vehicle. Thus we got stopped on the fringes of a riot and saw a machine gun cut a man in two before the militia let us move on. It was a huge relief to pass security check at our conurb and take a transporter which didn’t fail even once, up and across to our own place.

There we shared a shower, using an extravagant percentage of our monthly water ration, and dried each other off, and I slipped into a robe and Marie into something filmy; we had a drink and a toke which Haydn lilted, and got relaxed to the point where she shook her long tresses over her shoulders and her whisper tickled my ear: “Aw, c’mon, hero, the computers’ve got to’ve edited your last year’s coverage by now. I’ve looked forward all this while.”

I thought fleetingly of Jo. Well, she wouldn’t appear in a strictly wilderness-experience public-record documentary; and I myself was curious about what I had actually produced, and didn’t think a revisit in an electronic dream would pain me, even this soon afterward.

I was wrong.

What hurt most was the shoddiness. Oh yes, decent reproduction of a primrose nodding in the breeze, a hawk a-swoop, spurning whiteness and earthquake rumble of a distant avalanche, fallen leaves brown and baking under the sun, their smell and crackle, the laughter of a gust which flirted with my hair, suppleness incarnate in a snake or a cougar, flamboyance at sunset and shyness at dawn—a competent show. Yet it wasn’t real; it wasn’t what I had loved.

Marie said, slowly, in the darkness where we sat, “You did better before. Kruger, Mato Grosso, Baikal, your earlier stays in this region—I almost felt I was at your side. You weren’t a recorder there; you were an artist, a great artist. Why is this different?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “My presentation is kind of mechanical, I admit. I suppose I was tired.”

“In that case—” she sat very straight, half a meter from me, fingers gripped together, “—you didn’t have to stay on. You could have come home to me long before you did.”

But I wasn’t tired rammed through my head. No, now is when I’m drained; then, there, life flowed into me.

That gentian Jo wanted to see … it grows where the land suddenly drops. Right at the cliff edge those flowers grow, oh, blue, blue, blue against grass green and daisy white and the strong gray of stone; a streamlet runs past, leaps downward, ringing, cold, tasting of glaciers, rocks, turf, the air which also blows everywhere around me, around the high and holy peaks beyond…

“Lay off!” I yelled. My fist struck the chair arm. The fabric clung and cloyed. A shade calmer, I said, “Okay, maybe I got too taken up in the reality and lost the necessary degree of detachment.” I lie, Marie, I lie like Judas. My mind was never busier, planning how to use Jo and discard you. “Darling, those sensies, I’ll have nothing but them for the rest of my life.” And none of the gentians. I was too busy with my scheme to bother with anything small and gentle and blue. “Isn’t that penalty enough?”

“No. You did have the reality. And you did not bring it back.” Her voice was like a wind across the snows of upland winter.

Content

Fortune Hunter
Poul Anderson