Enemies of the System by Brian W. Aldiss

Author:Brian W. Aldiss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

VII

A harsh order was given. The six captives were made to march forward, yoked like oxen, into the semi-desert. Yellow mud splashed about their ankles with every step. Their heads were down and they moved for a long while in silence.

“The rain will never fertilize this ground,” said Takeido. “I would love to do some soil-analysis—you would expect to find an almost total absence of micro-organisms. No doubt that was why the crops failed when the colonists first crash-landed here. Vital links in the chain of life have yet to form. What a rotten planet to pick to land on.”

“With a minimum of terraforming, this could be a good planet,” replied Dulcifer. Nobody else said anything. With their heads bent and the difficulties underfoot, they felt disinclined for conversation.

“We’ll turn this into an endless carpet of wheat in a century,” Dulcifer said. Nobody answered him.

Time passed. The tourists lost account of it, in their increasing weariness. Their minds grew blank as every step became an effort. They gazed down at their muddied feet in dull animal pain.

Abruptly, their captors made them change direction and halt behind a pile of boulders crowned by ferns. The hunters dismounted, whereupon their steeds fell to the soggy ground as if dead. One hunter stood guard while the other four vanished rapidly among nearby boulders.

Minutes later, a terrible squealing sounded, followed by a deep silence. When the hunters reappeared, each held the leg of an ungainly creature swinging at arm’s length between them. Laughing in triumph, they threw the carcass down by their captives.

In this creature, adaptation from the standard human form had been carried to an amazing degree.

It was truly four-legged. In death, the larger hind legs doubled under its lean belly. It otherwise resembled a boar. What had been separate digits in the front legs of its ancestors had through usage become welded into horny hooves.

Eyes unwinking in death, it glared up at the downcast faces of the humans. Two small tusks, adaptations of canine teeth, curled outward from the upper jaw, raising the lip in a sneer. It was covered in short bristles and even boasted a short tail. Yet the horror lay not in its resemblance to an animal but in its resemblance to a man.

With business-like speed, the hunters hammered a spiked pole through the boar’s body from anus to mouth and balanced it on their shoulders. Using kicks and curses, they drove the panting zebras to their feet. Then they kicked the prisoners from their lethargy. The procession got under way again. The ground dried underfoot.

As the hours passed, the enforced march began to go harder with the prisoners. Their feet hurt, every muscle in their legs aching, the chafing of the pole on their shoulders became intolerable. They moaned for water and rest.

The day was well eroded before they were allowed another halt. For the last two hours, they had been moving steadily uphill, winding a painful way over gravelly slopes. As soon as they were permitted to stop, they fell to the ground in the same manner as the zebras.

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