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Tiger Hunt

Introduction

The concept of this story came to me full-blown. It would be about Ron and Melody Cordero, who'd resulted from research in human genetics. Two very intelligent and otherwise gifted tailor-made humans. But inevitably there were some erroneous assumptions in the geneticists' understanding, and the "tailor mades" would live their lives sorting out and learning to deal with the results. "Tiger Hunt" is a cusp in the lives of Ron and Melody.

I tried to make this story as dirt-real as I could. I knew the approximate location from the start; studying topographic maps refined it. Then I called the county road department and talked at length with a surveyor who knew the terrain intimately.

When I'd finished writing it, it seemed to me I'd written something special, so I sent it off to Stan Schmidt at Analog. Stan said he would have used it, but he already had a story about a Pleistocene wildlife refuge, and didn't feel he should run another one soon.

Jim Baen published it in New Destinies and asked for a sequel, a novel. I'd already thought about that, and wanted to do it, but declined the invitation. I'd have had to spend time in Uruguay, knew no Spanish, and at any rate couldn't afford the trip.

* * *

The night was overcast, but not heavily, and there was a half-moon. Through the window of the little Beech Hoverhawk, Ron Cordero could make out hills, looking more barren than they actually were, their wooded patches mostly saplings whose leaves had fallen.

The IR finder was much more revealing than the window. The night was cool and still, and it hadn't rained for a week. Thus, 1500 meters below, he could see not only occasional large mammals, but faintly where they'd stood earlier to graze or browse, and more clearly where they'd laid down.

His practiced eyes even told him what species, in all likelihood, he was seeing. There was the Quadrangle AB-19 mammoth herd, Neo-mammuthus primigenlus. He didn't trouble to count them; there'd be eight unless they'd lost a member, which wasn't likely. At the edge of the screen, in the Tin Can Creek drainage, he saw a band of hammerheads, wild horses, small and rough, growing shaggy in this season. And—

His attention sharpened. Something stalked the mustangs. Something large. He murmured into his throat mike, and the pilot banked the quiet little plane in that direction. Cordero locked the scanner on it, centered it, waited until they were nearer and lower, then keyed in the enhancer. And grunted his disappointment. Bear; a short-face. A few grizzlies had drifted into the Range, down the Teton and Marias Rivers, but that was a long way north. And this individual was too large for a grizzly. Male, too. Too big for a sow and there were no cubs or yearlings with it.

But bear wasn't what he was interested in.

He spoke to the pilot again, and they returned to their search pattern.

What he was looking for was a tiger of trophy quality, an over-the-hill male he knew of, declining in vigor, that he could justify having shot. One that didn't have many winters left to him. The Range let very few permits, and controlled closely what hunting it allowed.

Hyung wouldn't be too picky about condition; he'd hinted as much. "Just be sure the president gets his trophy, a good trophy, and don't take longer than three days." Which could require procedures they hadn't used before.

Loren Hyung, always the politician. He'd needed to be, when he'd been the boy wonder in charge of the old Pleistocene Genomes Institute. Fighting for credibility and funds, and adequate range. Fighting public uninterest, even parliamentary and bureaucratic hostility. Back when all they'd had was the 2,800 square kilometers of the Suffield Range, up in Alberta.

Back before the Yellowstone Volcanic Field let go. The eruption and the Red Plague, only months apart, had made half of Montana available.

Loren had really performed wonders then. Risking not only his job but his reputation, he'd gone to Washington instead of Ottawa. The staff, Cordero included, had thought their chief insane. But Loren had spellwoven key bureaucrats and politicians—it had taken magic more than science—and ended up with half the entire range seed stocks of the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Then the BLM had seeded narrow strips across the desert of volcanic ash he coveted in Montana.

The Office of the President had also promised support for his central proposal—200,000 square kilometers in Montana for a Pleistocene Mammals Range.

Then he'd gone to Ottawa.

It wouldn't have flown at all, of course, if Washington and Ottawa hadn't already been holding exploratory talks on union. The Great Crash and three years of unprecedented Troubles worldwide, followed by the Plague and drastic depopulation, made things possible that otherwise would hardly have been conceivable.

Maybe Loren still needed to be a politician. With Kollar coming, it certainly couldn't hurt. But politics wasn't the sort of thing that Cordero, or maybe even Loren Hyung, cared for. It was hard to be sure about Loren. Though he'd been born in Vancouver, not in China, be was a difficult man to read.

Cordero hadn't known that Edward Kollar gave a damn about hunting. His trophies had been political. Maybe he was image-building now. There were people, a lot of people, who'd feel better about a president who hunted. Although the order had come down that there was to be no publicity.

* * *

The little plane doubled back on the next transect, and Cordero spotted a band of twenty or so giant bison, Bison neo-latifrons, lying up near a creek, no doubt chewing their cuds. And less than a kilometer from them, wooly rhinos, a female and calf. A little later he spied a pack of wolves—whether Canis neo-dirus or lobos, he couldn't tell—sleeping off a case of gluttony around the remains of a wild horse.

For some reason, Cordero tended to prefer the lobos—he didn't know why. The lobo was nature's own, while he'd dedicated most of his adult life to the products of genetic engineering. He was a tailor-made himself; he and Melody both were. With all that that entailed—the introversion, the sense of difference, the high IQs and longevity—all the minuses and pluses.

Finally he found his tiger. First, faintly, he saw its signature: where it had lain awhile on an open slope. Quickly he spotted the animal itself, lying up now within the edge of an aspen copse, its leaves fallen. By the edge of the copse, in the open, were the remains of a kill, a whitetail deer, aspen leaves scratched over it in a nominal effort to cover it.

Cordero was virtually certain it was the tiger he'd been looking for. It was too large for a female, and while he couldn't delineate territories with any accuracy, he was reasonably sure this was within the old male's.

In the morning he'd check him out on the ground.

Too bad the tiger wasn't closer to a road, Cordero thought. A saddle-sore president would be an unhappy president. Maybe Kollar would settle for a short-face; they were easier to find, and stuffed they were awesome. Maybe he'd find the nerve to suggest it to him. Maybe the sun would rise in the west. The President of the North American Federation, Chairman of the Federation Party, Ed Kollar wasn't used to people suggesting he change his goals because they were awkward and inconvenient. Cordero told himself he'd be better off suggesting to the tiger that he move closer to the road.

Kollar wouldn't be arriving for a week. Maybe the tiger, in his wanderings, just might move closer to a road by then.

* * *

The next morning before dawn, Cordero was back in the air, this time in the stealth chopper. He relocated the tiger—it was still by its kill—and had himself put down to check the animal out. Put down on a hilltop two kilometers away. When applied to choppers, stealth is a relative term, and it was policy not to fly aircraft in such a way as to alarm the Pleistocene mammals.

After checking the wind—if he'd been other than downwind of the tiger, he'd have had the chopper move him elsewhere—Cordero started hiking toward it. The chopper stayed where it was. He carried zoom binocs with a lightweight collapsible tripod, and a tracy to talk to the chopper with. Should the tiger feel combative, Cordero also carried two skunk bombs, and as backup, an old .357 magnum S&W revolver that he'd never needed yet.

He jogged. It seemed to him he could detect the first hint of dawn. Best to be there early, and wait for light.

* * *

The sun was up when he got back to the compound. His wife was leaving for her job as principal clerk, when he came walking up the driveway toward the small government house they lived in. They paused briefly when they met.

"There are grapefruit sections in the fridge," she said. "And fried bacon. The rest is up to you."

He nodded. "I found the president's trophy animal."

She averted her eyes, not nodding. "I have to go," she said. "I'll be late." Briefly he watched her leave, then went in the house. After twenty years of marriage, he was used to the moods that settled on her now and then. When Kollar was gone, she'd be all right.

He found the grapefruit pieces and ate them at the sink, then took bran flakes from the cupboard, filled a bowl, added milk, and sat down at the kitchen table where the autumn sun flooded in. Afterward, the sharp corners of his hunger blunted, he fried eggs, made toast, and ate them with the cold bacon Melody had mentioned. He avoided coffee just now, drinking milk instead. He intended to go to bed for a few hours, and didn't want the caffeine.

As he did these things, his thoughts were on Melody. She'd always been subject to resentments, though the mood they engendered didn't usually persist the way this one had.

It had started when he'd told her that Kollar was coming, and that he'd be guiding him. He hadn't tried to find out why, specifically, it had upset her. He'd learned early that questions increased her resentment, fueled her mood. As if questions were accusations.

She'd never expressed dislike of Kollar in particular. He was the lowest profile dictator—well, semi-dictator—that Cordero knew of. But she sometimes expressed bitterness toward government, even though she worked for a government agency and was paid and treated well by it.

As with some other tailor-mades, things hadn't worked out for her. She'd been engineered to be a great singer, and her voice was a marvelous contralto, pure and rich. But somehow she had poor pitch, even with accompaniment. She could hear pitch but not duplicate it. As a little child she'd loved to sing, loved it more than anything, and poor pitch was usual in little children, no problem. But she hadn't outgrown hers.

She could have become a successful instrumentalist—she played the piano very well when she felt like it—but instead she painted. Which she also did well, but without enthusiasm.

The matter of sterility bothered her too. Lots of tailor-mades adopted. For one thing, having children in the house tended to disguise being tailor-mades. But Melody had been unwilling. In forty years, she said, we'd look younger than our foster children. We'd see them grow old and die.

He'd failed as a tailor-made too, but to him it didn't feel like failure. Because in his case the failure was of preference, not ability. The function he'd been designed for, he found distasteful. Instead he'd found something he loved, found it early and spent his entire adult life working at it, rising to the top. Occasionally, he wondered if Melody secretly resented his doing successfully what he truly loved to do. Above his present position were only administrative jobs. Desks and in-house politics, probably in the capital: Detroit-Windsor. He much preferred to spend the rest of his working life as senior field biologist on the Pleistocene Mammals Range.

They really did have a good situation here, both Melody and himself. There was little prejudice, though at least some of the people here knew they were tailor-mades. The Hyungs had to know, though they'd never mentioned it. The two families had known each other for twenty years, had seen each other almost daily. Since he'd arrived as a new graduate assistant at the old Pleistocene Genomes Institute at Medicine Hat, when Loren had been deputy administrator. In those twenty years, Loren and Lissa had aged twenty years worth, he and Melody perhaps seven or eight.

Their prospect of longevity was the thing the media had made the most of, back when Project Tailor Made had been exposed. And longevity was one reason some people resented them. Although in the Bad Old Days, the murders of tailor-mades had to some extent been inspired by certain television preachers. "Tailor-mades are not Children of God! They are blasphemies made by Godless scientists!" There'd been only—only!—three lynchings plus two assassinations. But there'd also been a dozen beatings, tortures and rapes; ugly, terrifying things, by packs. And half the victims weren't tailor-mades at all.

All in the name of God. Then churches from Catholic to Baptist. Unitarian to Islamic, had condemned the acts, and television had shown condemnatory dramas loosely based on them. All in all, new understandings had probably resulted, but scars had been left.

As exasperating as Loren could occasionally be, he showed no sign, even subtle, of prejudice. Nor did Lissa, who in fact was Melody's only woman friend, who could light a light in her and make her laugh.

Melody had never said so. but it seemed to him that she simply disliked government, and perhaps by extension Kollar, its boss now, because of Project Tailor Made. She considered herself a victim of it, and it had been a government project, initially secret, within the Agency for Special Studies.

Cordero washed his few dishes—Melody had cleaned hers—checked the sawdust-burning furnace, then sat down to brush his teeth in front of the television, taking his mind off his wife. After that he set the alarm clock, lay down across their bed, and went to sleep.

* * *

Every night until the day of the president's arrival, the Hoverhawk had been out to locate the sabertooth. The tiger's travels plotted as a very rough half-oval, and it had indeed moved somewhat closer to the highway.

On arrival day, a Marine Corps presidential security section had arrived before dawn—their H-67C Kommando was parked near the helipad when Cordero walked to work—and quietly, swiftly, they'd gone over the complex with various detection gear, looking for only they knew what. They'd also set up sentry equipment and fire positions.

No one told Cordero these things, but as he walked to the administration building and saw the personnel carrier with its rotors drooping, and its Marine Corps insignia, he knew in a general way what they must have done. What he'd have done, if he'd been in charge. It was just as well, he told himself, that they were eight kilometers from Great Falls here, and away from the highway. Obtrusive security could be poor PR.

He wondered if—the thought was both farcical and grotesque—he wondered if marines would shadow the president on the hunt.

Cordero was at his desk at 0755, his usual time. By 0950 he'd skimmed and read through the memos and reports there, dictating comments and replies to his computer as its silent printer turned his words into hard copy. Then he started scanning and reading through a backlog of technical journals and abstracts, entering keywords into his database. By noon he'd heard nothing about the president's arrival time, and went home to lunch.

Melody arrived before the tea kettle boiled. They made sandwiches from a tuna spread she'd mixed the day before, and sat down in front of ancient Sesame Street reruns, not saying a great deal. She wasn't disagreeable; simply quiet, preoccupied. The president's coming was on her mind, Cordero felt sure. When they left, clouds had blocked the sun, and a chilly breeze had come up.

Back at his desk, he continued his assault on the literature. He was browsing Dissertation Abstracts when his intercom interrupted him. Reaching for the receiver, he looked at his wall clock: 1412 hours. "Cordero," he said.

Loren Hyung's voice answered him. "Army One just called. They'll be on the pad at fourteen-thirty hours. Be at my office at fourteen-twenty."

"Got it. Fourteen-twenty at your office." Cordero's rectum had clenched at the message. As if he were going into battle, he thought wryly. Taking an old kitchen timer from a desk drawer, he set it for six minutes, then began reading the next abstract, a doctoral study from Laval University on the rate of snow accumulation on different parts of the Ungava Ice Sheet, and rates of perimeter extension. Peripheral firn fields, last winter's snow, reached south of the tundra now, into the taiga below latitude fifty-five! On the other side of Hudson Bay, the Keewatin ice had reached south of sixty. The opening phase of a new Pleistocene glaciation. It was as if the universe were responding to their reconstruction of the Pleistocene mammal genomes.

Whatever, he wondered, became of the greenhouse effect? Wondered facetiously, because with the solar constant down three percent, the climate had done just what you'd expect. The Yellowstone eruption, and the consequent two years of strongly increased albedo, had given the cooling a sharp boost, making a piker out of 1816, old "eighteen hundred and froze to death." But the solar "constant" was the real cause.

The timer dinged. Grabbing his jacket, he strode to Hyung's office near the front of the building. Hyung was putting on his jacket as Cordero arrived, and they went out a side door together. Occasional snowflakes drifted down the breeze as the two men walked to a shelter near the helipad, a shelter resembling a Winnipeg bus stop. Somewhere high, barely audible, a plane passed over. Probably loaded with electronics, part of presidential security, he thought, perhaps one of the old MVW surveillance planes.

When he heard the slapping of rotors, Cordero glanced at his watch: 1425:14. The marines were not in evidence, but they'd be watching. Intently. At 1429:23, Army One was on the pad, its rotors still. Steps extruded. A sergeant emerged, then a captain, both in field uniform, both wearing side arms, and stood at attention on the pavement on either side of the stairs. Hyung and Cordero stopped at the edge of the concrete slab.

Then a small man, also in field uniform, stepped out the door, paused, and started down the steps. For just a moment Cordero didn't recognize him. Somehow he'd always thought of the president as a larger man, not tall, but not so short. The president's eyes had found them from the door and examined them for a moment before he'd started down. They watched him to the ground, then Hyung started toward him, Cordero alongside, to meet the president halfway. Protocol? Cordero wondered. Hyung would know.

Cordero hardly noticed the Secret Service men, and the physician in army uniform, who'd followed the president down.

Up close, Ed Kollar might have stood 165 centimeters in jump boots, about five feet four barefoot. He looked hard and wiry; his eyes were pale blue, and Cordero wondered when last they'd flinched. But they were not fierce, not now at least, and the mouth half smiled as Hyung introduced Cordero to the president. The president's hand was large for his size, and when they gripped, its hardness disconcerted Cordero. Gripping it was like gripping a two-by-four.

Then they started toward the headquarters building, Cordero a pace behind, feeling swept along by the presidential wake. He wondered how much of the impact was the man and how much the office, or if differentiating meant anything.

Loren gave the president "the tour," starting with an introduction to the on-site staff gathered in the lecture hall. Kollar grinned at them—a grin so unexpected and so light, it startled Cordero all over again—said he was glad to meet them and that he admired what they were doing. Then the small entourage left, Kollar still grinning. They looked into a couple of offices, visited the library and labs, then the huge vet clinic and necropsy room.

From there it was Loren who took the president to the gun locker to select a rifle for the hunt. And Loren who would drive the president to the rifle range, where he'd sight the weapon in for himself and get the feel of it. The Range insisted that their hunters use one of the "house" guns, four-shot bolt actions, so that in a moment of buck fever they couldn't spray bullets all over the place.

Normally the guides handled the hunter through the selection and familiarization, but Cordero had been glad to have Loren do it.

At 1640 they were back and in Hyung's large, utilitarian office: the president, the president's personal physician, one of the Secret Service men, Cordero, and Hyung. Another Secret Service man stood outside in the corridor, and a third was around somewhere.

"Ron," Hyung said, "give the president a rundown on your plans for the hunt. That'll give him an opportunity to ask questions and stipulate changes."

"Right," Cordero answered. "First though, sir, how many of your people will be going into the field with us?"

"None. It's you and me."

It was what Cordero would have hoped for, if it had occurred to him as possible, yet the answer both startled and worried him. It seemed to him he could smell the disapproval of the Secret Service man at this presidential edict. "Fine," he said. "We'll have a wrangler too, to keep camp and tend the horses. Our actual hunting will be on foot. I'd like to get an early start tomorrow—pick you up in front of the guest cottage at oh-six hundred. I've checked out a trophy-size male with an excellent set of tusks, and relocated him from the air last night so I know roughly where to look tomorrow. We can . . ."

The president interrupted him with a gesture. "Checked him out in advance? How do you do that?"

Cordero described the procedure—the ground approach, the zoom binocs. "If the tiger's in his prime," he added, "we pass him by. But if he shows signs of deterioration—grizzled muzzle, lost an eye maybe, especially anything wrong with his gait . . ."

The president stopped him again. "Suppose he doesn't get up and move around for you?"

"Once the light is adequate, if he isn't up and moving around, I shout at him. That always does it."

The presidential eyebrows raised. "Hnh! Which direction does he usually move then? Toward you or away?"

"So far, in the case of a tiger, he's always moved away, taking his own sweet time. Unless he's by a kill. In that case he'll pace around making warning noises—a sort of coughing sound—and maybe make a short rush to worry me. A saber-tooth is probably less dangerous than a Bengal. And in the case of any particular saber-tooth, he's probably never seen a human before, so I don't really worry him. Besides, there's likely to be a hundred meters or more between us, and he doesn't know how slow I am."

"What do you carry in case he does charge?"

"Well, first of all, even a short-faced bear isn't likely to make more than a bluffing charge. But if he keeps coming, we throw a skunk bomb his way. It makes a loud bang and puts out an oily cloud of mercaptans and butyl mercaptans—pretty much the same stuff as skunk spray. We've only ever used them—" He turned and looked at Hyung. "Four times, is it?"

"I think that's right. Yes."

"Four times in the field, that is. A lot more in enclosure tests, years ago. And it's always worked. Even rhinos back off. Even lions, and they tend to tolerate stinks better than most."

"No gun?"

"A sidearm. In my case a .357 magnum double-action revolver. Smith & Wesson. But the skunk bombs have never failed."

"You said lions. Any chance we'll meet any?"

"I'll almost guarantee we won't. We planted the lions in the eastern half of the Range and the tigers in the west, to let the tigers get well established before they had to compete. The original Pleistocene stocks coexisted for a long time, but we're not sure how well our reconstructions duplicate their behavior. An adult male neo-atrox—that's the lion—is a bit bigger than a tiger—about a fourth bigger than an African lion. But our biggest concern is that lions run in prides, and they can gang up on a tiger.

"The lions have spread a long way from their release points since then, but they're not this far west yet. Though it won't be long; maybe a year or two. Our annual survey, last month, showed one pride only about seventy kilometers east of where we'll be.

"As it turns out, there hasn't been any critical problem between the two species. There's enough horses and bison and muskoxen and pronghorn and deer that the prides apparently aren't inclined to tackle anything as dangerous as a tiger."

Cordero moved to wind things up. "By starting early, we can get close to our tiger by evening. Or—" He paused. "Or we can have an aerial spotter guide us to him by radio if you'd like."

The president flicked a glance at Hyung, who didn't react. "Is that something you do often?" Kollar asked. "Have a plane guide you to the animal?"

"Actually, it's something we've never done. But most of our hunters have a week to hunt in, if they need it, not just three days. And you are the president."

Kollar's eyes were steady on Cordero's, and he spoke wryly. "Let's do it the usual way. I didn't come here for a corral shoot, and my life won't be ruined if I don't get a tiger, this trip or any other."

Cordero nodded, blushing faintly. "Yes sir. And one other thing: I'm told you're an experienced rider."

"I was born in Moose Jaw, but I grew up on a working ranch in Cherry County, Nebraska. Rode saddle broncs on the rodeo team in college. These days I only ride now and then, but I should hold up all right.

"You said oh-six hundred. Would you rather start earlier? I'm willing, if you want to."

"No sir. Oh-six hundred is early enough."

* * *

The meeting broke up after a few more minutes. The president had specified in advance that no formal dinner was to be given for him, but he'd accepted an invitation for supper with Loren and Lissa. Considering Melody's feelings, Cordero was glad they hadn't been invited, and he felt drained from talking with the president, as if they'd wrestled. He'd have a quiet supper at home, check his hunting gear once more, watch TV for a little while, and go early to bed.

Melody was silent, before supper and while they ate. Afterward, while she loaded the dishwasher, Ron found an ancient Laugh-In rerun on television, and relaxed in his easy chair. Melody came in while Miss Ormsby was walloping the Dirty Old Man with her purse, and stepped between Ron and the set.

"Why you?" she said sharply. "Why didn't you assign someone else? You're the senior field biologist! You could have had Richard guide him!"

Cordero felt himself, his spirit, slumping. He didn't need an upset now. "Loren chose me," he said. "He specifically wanted me to do the job."

"Why? Most of the others guide more than you do now!"

"I don't know why. I didn't ask; it seemed fine to me. And I know the beasties better, have more overall experience with them than anyone else on staff."

"I don't want you to go out there with that man! Call in sick! Say you have diarrhea! The flu!"

Her eyes were wild. Frightened.

"Sweetheart, I will not do that. I won't lie. Not without a compelling reason."

"Please, damn it! Please!"

"Melody, you're getting shrill."

She stopped. Then: "I'm your reason," she said. Quietly. Stiffly. "Don't I count?"

"You count," her husband answered. "More than anyone. And if you'd asked even yesterday, I'd have taken it up with Loren." He got up. "I'm going out. For a walk along the river. Come with me."

She stared for a moment, then relaxed and nodded. Going to the closet, he got their heavy jackets, gloves, the matched skating caps she'd knitted. Neither said anything. To his surprise, when they went out, the cloud cover had begun to break. In the west, Venus glinted through a gap, while Polaris was visible in the north. He felt her hand, ungloved, seek his, and he removed his own glove. It was a short distance to the Missouri, and they walked along the high bank on a bridle path, holding hands, while a breeze clicked the bare branches of cottonwoods.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I know I was—irrational. Just—don't let anything happen to you out there."

Happen to me. He squeezed her hand. "I'll do my best, sweetheart," he said quietly. "I will."

* * *

The small hunter caravan headed southwest on what had been I-15, in the chill half-light of an autumn dawn. Only one side of the old divided highway was maintained, a broken yellow line down its center. The president expressed surprise that the pavement was as good as it was. At some time within the last year or two, the breaks and potholes had been patched with macadam. Vehicular traffic everywhere was way down, of course. When the Red Plague had run its course, the world had had a little over a billion people left, of the eight billion there'd been four years earlier, just before the crash. In the North American Federation, the population had since recovered to 54 million, but they were concentrated increasingly in the Sun Belt states.

The caravan consisted of a AWD six-pack pickup, followed by a conventional AWD pickup with a horse rack, pulling a four-horse trailer. Cordero drove the six-pack, with the president beside him and two Secret Service agents in back.

At that hour they met only two vehicles, trucks, in forty-five kilometers. At the wind-picked skeleton of an abandoned village, they crossed the Missouri River, turning toward sunrise on a dirt road. After a time, the road ended at a routed wooden sign that read:

PLEISTOCENE MAMMALS RANGE BOUNDARY
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED
N.A.F. DEPT SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

They stopped there. Fifteen minutes later, Ron Cordero and the President of North America were in the saddle headed southeastward, followed at a little distance by their wrangler/packer, a loaded pack mule, and the bait nag. Cordero carried his .357 magnum on his belt, and in a long saddle boot, a .416 Remington Magnum. The rifle was to finish the kill if the hunter's four rounds weren't enough. Protection was the function of the skunk bombs clipped on Cordero's belt.

The president's rifle was a .375 H&H magnum with a muzzle brake to reduce recoil, and a three-round clip. It was less powerful, had less reach, and was less difficult to shoot than the Remington. But it was adequate even for Bison Neo-latifrons, and there was no hunting of mammoth, mastodon, or rhino on the Range.

The hills were mainly grassland, but scattered over them were copses of young aspen, mostly scrubby. The light cottony seed had ridden the winds from the mountains to the southwest. Where a seedling, delicate and frail, survived on the ashfall, it grew quickly, and was soon surrounded by clone mates that had sprouted from its widespreading roots. They grew where aspen had scarcely been seen for millenia, beneficiaries of the colder, wetter summers. The grass stood thicker and taller now too.

The president scanned the country around. "Nice," he said.

"It suits my tastes, sir." Cordero stopped his horse for a moment to let the wrangler catch up, but when the man saw this, he stopped too, keeping his distance. Cordero shrugged and rode on. Charlie Ruud had packed for him before, with other hunters, and had never hesitated to keep them company. He wondered if the wrangler was spooked by the president; it seemed out of character for Charlie.

As they rode, they talked. Cordero commented on how dour the Secret Service men had been in the pickup. Kollar chuckled. "I'm a trial to them; they don't like me out of their sight." He gestured upward with a thumb. "We're under surveillance right now, by people with good response time and plenty of firepower. But they're not satisfied with that."

Cordero glanced upward, not seeing anything, not sure that the president wasn't putting him on.

After that they discussed tigers—their habits, their relations with other species and other tigers. And how Cordero planned to conduct the hunt. From there, their sporadic conversations went to other species, both indigenous and "resurrected."

They stopped on top of a rounded ridge and got down to relieve themselves, then picketed their animals, took a quick cold snack of jerky and freeze-dried apple slices from their saddlebags, and sat down on the ground. Charlie Ruud still kept apart, holding his separation at sixty or seventy meters. From where they sat, they could see a group of mastodons, Neo-mammut americanum, browsing an aspen copse some seven hundred meters away, the first big game they'd seen except for a band of pronghorn. The genetically reconstructed mastodons were true to the original, including the shaggy red hair. "Even to the form of the cusps on the molars," Cordero said.

He grinned wryly at the president. "There was discussion of reconstructing the Neanderthal genome, but the powers-that-were were afraid of legal and ethical complications." He changed the subject then, realizing it could lead to talk about tailor-mades. "Be all right If I ask Charlie to come over and sit with us? He's usually good company."

Kollar's head jerked a negative. "Let him he. He's following Loren's instructions. From me."

For a moment, the president's meaning didn't register on Cordero. Then a sense of . . . not fear but entrapment seeped through him. The president went on.

"You're an interesting person, Cordero. I want to know more about you." Uncertainty flashed in Cordero's eyes; a smile quirked a corner of Kollar's mouth. "I don't have execution in mind," the president added. "Or even persecution."

Cordero nodded woodenly, and somehow Melody's parting words came to him.

Again the president waited before saying more, giving Cordero a moment to settle out. "Dr. Hyung tells me you're the operational brains of this outfit," he went on. "That you're the one who came up with practically all the field management policies and procedures for this whole outfit." A muscular hand gestured eastward at the Range, the mastodons. "He says he's recommended you for a GS-13 Supervisory Biologist annually for years, and the DST has turned it down every time. He's quite sour about that. Says you ought to be at least a 14 by now, properly a 15, instead of a 12."

Again the eyebrow cocked. "A 15 would make you equal to him in grade, you know. Which is damned high praise from an administrator. Especially one with Loren's record of accomplishment." Watching for Cordero's reaction, Kollar tucked a slice of dried apple in his mouth, chewed awhile, then swallowed. "I've promised him I'll take care of it when I get back to the District. A lot of field people don't fully appreciate the fiscal crunches we have back there, but this sounds like a matter of justice too long denied."

He gave Cordero a chance to respond. What, Cordero wondered, is he leading up to? "Thank you, Mr. President. Loren mentioned a couple times sending up the paperwork, and that it hadn't gotten through. It's not something I've had a lot of attention on, but we'll be delighted to get it, Melody and I both."

The president didn't speak again at once, now giving Cordero a vacation from his steady gaze. His teeth engaged a stick of unsmoked jerky wearing it down, knotty muscles bunching in jaws, cheeks, temples. When he'd mastered it, he looked at the biologist again. "I'm not talking about a 15, you understand. A 13 this time and a 14 when you've satisfied the requirement of three years in grade. I'm not throwing regulation out the window, just getting action."

Cordero nodded. "Right," he said. Telling himself this is not what he really has to say.

Kollar seemed to read his awareness. "Maybe I should get down to the real reason we're talking here."

Once more he stopped, bit off a piece of hardtack and briefly chewed. "You've shown a lot of the talent you were engineered for, you know. More than just the intelligence."

So he knows I'm a tailor-made.

"You've shown the ability to analyze situations, take responsibility, handle things without the wrong kind of emotion, and create procedures that work. If you'd gone to West Point, you'd have been a general by now."

Now, Cordero thought, we're getting there. "Thank you sir. But I respectfully submit that as a military officer, I'd have had a major shortcoming. I'd have been deeply unhappy in my career. And in a situation like that, my job performance would not have been satisfactory. Certainly not over time."

The presidential lips pursed, the presidential head nodded. "Not over an extended time perhaps." The eyebrow raised again. "I suppose you've never seen your personality profile."

"No sir. Never thought about it."

"I've seen it. Your profile, that is. And it's very unusual—extremely high, clear across the board. All the characteristics: aggressive, appreciative, communicative, composed . . . . I don't recall them all. Responsible is one of them. The psych officer told me that psychologically you're either a frigging genius or a rare kind of psych case: someone so phony, the person himself doesn't know he's phony."

The president chuckled. "I asked him how I could tell which. 'By the person's accomplishments,' he said. 'By how well he does things.' And by your performance, Cordero. you're extremely able." He chuckled again. "The psych asked me how much money you make. Said that's the best single indicator he knew of. It'd be interesting to see what his profile looks like. Or maybe they don't reflect values."

The president got to his feet. "I'm ready to go if you are."

They unpicketed their horses, put the bits in their mouths, and mounted. So he's examined my personality profile, Cordero mused. In Detroit-Windsor, because he looked at it with a psych. What in hell is this about? Am I really that good? Or the complete phony? I'm sure as hell not rich. Irritation flashed. Cordero, he told himself, ignore it. It's probably bullshit.

The president's voice drew him out of himself, and Cordero turned to him. "I suspect," Kollar said, "that talking about someone's personality profile is a good way to introvert him."

Cordero nodded, smiling slightly. "I guarantee it." He tapped his heels to his horse's ribs and started down the slope, scanning around as he did so, looking outside himself at his environment. The mastodons were still there; they paused in their feeding to watch the mounted humans. The sky was nearly cloudless. And somewhere a few hours ahead was a trophy-class Neo-smilodon, a sabertooth, waiting unknowingly for the president's bullet.

* * *

With the hours and a virtual absence of breeze, it became warm enough that they took off their jackets. They saw more wildlife: mostly hammerheads, but also numerous jackrabbits, once a coyote with three pups following her, and a band of about twenty pronghorn. Finally they came to a coulee, and after pausing to look, Cordero nudged his horse over its rim onto a well-beaten game trail that angled southward down its side.

In the bottom grazed a band of giant Pleistocene bison—a herd bull, four cows, and several yearlings and calves—perhaps a hundred meters ahead. He'd skirt them carefully, Cordero thought. There should be no problem. Herd bulls were dependably surly but seldom really truculent. Ruud knew well enough how to behave, and this president would too.

A shallow stream flowed along the coulee bottom, and a little way beyond the bison a young stand of cottonwood and balsam poplar accompanied the creek, their straight slender trunks clear of limbs for much of their seven-meter height. They'll bear seed some year soon, Cordero thought, and we'll start seeing a lot more woods here.

A vagrant puff of air brought a whiff of balsam poplar to his nose, like liniment on the breeze, and the bull snorted, snatching Cordero's attention.

A short-faced bear, Neo-arctodus simus, rushed from the cottonwoods as the bison turned and ran. In an instant the bear was on a calf, whose bleating lacerated the air. He clutched it, dragged it down, crushed its neck vertabrae with short, powerful jaws, and the bleating stilled.

The frightened saddle horses danced in the trail, their riders fighting them with reins and bits.

The bull had bolted only a dozen meters before stopping to face the bear. The other bison stopped when the bleating did, to mill around snorting. The bear's attention left his kill and went to the bull, which pawed the ground now, swinging its heavy head, its meter and a half spread of horns. The bull stood more than two meters at the shoulder, and Cordero guessed he'd mass at least one and a half metric tons, bone and muscle. The bear, designed for speed, might weigh a longlegged five hundred kilos—half a ton.

The bull started for the bear, and the bear for the cottonwoods. He'd come back for his meal after the bison had moved on.

All this had happened inside twenty seconds—the rush, the kill, the face-off, the departure. Cordero was holding his horse where it stood, not allowing it to turn. A glance backward had shown him the pack mule standing immobile on the trail while the bait nag roped behind it whinnied and jerked.

The bull reached the dead calf, sniffed its blood, raised his head and looked around. The bear was out of sight; the men and their horses were not. He turned and started toward them at a meaningful trot, head and tail both up.

Ron Cordero didn't wait for the huge beast to break into a gallop. He drew his revolver and fired, once. The bull fell as if axed.

"Jesus!" Kollar breathed.

"Okay, let's go," Cordero said, then gestured Ruud to come on, and urged his own, still-nervous mount down the trail. At the bottom he moved aside, making way for the president, and looked back again at Ruud. The mule hadn't moved; the bait nag had quieted, was probably trembling. The wrangler had let go their lead rope and was spurring up the steep bank to get behind them.

Cordero grinned and shook his head. "He's got a bullwhip. He'll have them down pretty quick."

Kollar gestured at the bull, which lay perhaps 30 meters away. "What do you do now? Call in a chopper to dress him out and salvage the meat? Or do we leave him here?"

"He's not dead. At least he shouldn't be, though I expect he's bleeding pretty badly. I shot him in the horn. Can you imagine what it would be like, a .357 magnum slug impacting a horn fastened firmly to the skull?"

"You shot him in the horn?"

"Right. I didn't want to leave this band without a herd bull to protect it. Although this one didn't do a very good job. He should have gone for the bear at first whiff."

At the gunshot, the cows and young had wheeled again and run farther down the coulee. Cordero crossed the stream, then waved Ruud and his animals past him and up the game trail on the other side. Finally he and Kollar followed, keeping one eye on the bull, which now had struggled sluggishly to its feet.

"You showed a lot of confidence in your marksmanship back there," Kollar said. "I'd have used a skunk bomb."

Cordero nodded. "You don't use a skunk bomb at that range without getting badly stunk up. Not when you're downwind. And it's really awful stuff, so I prefer not to, if I have a choice. Besides, the first time that guy back there gets challenged by some young bull, I wouldn't be surprised if his horn breaks where the bullet hit it. Then there'll be a new herd bull, maybe one that'll do a better job."

Ruud had stood by at the top of the coulee and let them pass. As they rode by, he commented with a grin on Cordero's marksmanship. Cordero laughed. When they'd reestablished their lead, he spoke to the president again.

"It sounds as if you vetted me personally. And thoroughly. I'm curious why."

Kollar grunted. "What do you know about Uruguay?"

"Uruguay?" The seeming non sequitur took Cordero by surprise. "That's . . . I get Uruguay and Paraguay mixed up. Uruguay . . . Let's see. The capital is Montevideo, which is a seaport, so Uruguay's the one on the Atlantic between Brazil and Argentina, But that's all I really know about it." He'd used the old, conventional names: Brazil and Argentina no longer existed as political entities, but their successors were numerous and changeable.

"Beyond that I can only guess: Southern Brazil is grassland, and so is a lot of Argentina, so I suppose Uruguay is grassland too, probably cattle country. And it's far enough south of the equator, it should have winters of a sort: a cool season. Which probably also means it had heavy European immigration, like Argentina. And it wasn't in the news to any extent, in the days when we had lots of international coverage, so it probably had fairly stable government. Back before the Collapse and the Troubles. But I've heard something about fighting there in recent years."

The president grinned broadly. "You get an A-plus on reasoning from limited data. Population before the Collapse was about 3.4 million, with a high literacy percentage and a decent standard of living. After the Plague, probably a couple hundred thousand were left. Twelve years ago, General Mazinni sent an army in and annexed it to Argentina del Norte.

"There's been a series of resistance actions against the Argentinians ever since, plus military incursions from the north, by the Republic of Rio Grande do Sul. Like most of South America, services—medical, transportation, education, utilities—are pretty much back to the levels of the eighteen hundreds—all right for now, maybe, but not when the population grows back to a couple million. Especially with Argentina or Rio Grande do Sul looting the place in the name of taxes and reparations."

Kollar had turned serious again. "What I'm going to tell you now is covered by the Official Secrets Act, and it's highly classified. If you talk about it to anyone not cleared for it, you're in serious trouble."

Cordero's guts tightened. "Maybe I don't want to hear it."

The president ignored him and seemed to change the subject. "Except for the occasional chinook," he said, "the winters here average what these days? Near zero now in Fahrenheit terms, eh?"

"Minus fourteen Celsius at Great Falls for January, the last ten years. That's including the chinook days."

The president nodded. "And the summers are cooling too."

"Seventeen Celsius for July," Cordero answered. He thought of the new pocket glaciers in the Bitteroots, south of Missoula. Still small, measured in hectares or fractions of hectares, but twenty years ago they hadn't been there at all. In spite of himself, Cordero was intensely interested now in what the president was getting at. "And its going to get a lot colder before it gets warmer," he added. "The bigger the Canadian ice fields get, the faster they'll grow. Positive feedback."

"Right. So a few of us have been considering warmer real estate."

Cordero had realized that from Kollar's interest in Uruguay. But why was he being told?

"Specifically," Kollar continued, "the North American Federation is considering the invasion and conquest of Uruguay; taking it away from Argentina del Norte. Mazinni's having trouble keeping his own nation together in the face of ambitious district governors and occasional warlords."

"Why should the Uruguayans like NAF rulers any better than Argentinian rulers?"

"For one thing, we won't loot the place. And we'll offer the government to the leader of their own resistance movement: Eustaquio Aguinaldo. All we'll ask—insist on, actually—is that we be allowed to land immigrants. Technical people and farmers, mainly, from Canada and the northern tier of states. All of them with a cram course in Spanish."

While superficially it sounded plausible, Cordero was unconvinced. But instead of pulling on the strings that bothered him, he brought up an ancillary issue. "Uruguay's pretty small, as I recall. Can you move enough people there to do much good?"

"The land is good: soil, climate, people. And—" The president paused, shrugged, went on. "Just to the north is Rio Grande do Sul, their recent invader, a country about twice as large as Uruguay. Like Uruguay, it's good grazing land, with a potential for extensive irrigation. And across the Uruguay River to the west, there's Entre Rios and Corrientes-Misiones, states of Argentina del Norte. They're all pretty heavily depopulated. With a total area about like the Federation east of the Mississippi and south of Kentucky. But more fertile. We'll take them too."

Ed Kollar wasn't looking at Cordero now. He might have been looking at problems, or possibly his horse's neck.

"Mr. President."

The eyes raised, met Cordero's. "Yeah?"

"Pandora's box."

"Uruguay? All of them? They could be, easily enough. We'll need highly skilled on-site leadership. And good, hard-nosed officers willing to keep their troops from abusing and insulting the local civilians. And luck. A certain amount of luck."

"A lot of luck," Cordero said, "or it'll turn into a great bleeding ulcer that'll be hard to let go of and terrible to keep."

Kollar said nothing, and they rode without talking again till Cordero called another break. This time they sat down on an outlook facing east.

"Mr. President, why did you tell me all that?"

Kollar's eyes turned to him, direct and meaningful. "Before the McArdle administration killed it, Project Tailor Made engineered six people for political leadership and four others for military leadership. Ten all told. There wasn't much difference in the specs for the two types. They were to be 'the great leaders of tomorrow.'

"I don't have to tell you that tailor-mades didn't work out as intended. In general they met the physical specs but often not the mental and mostly not the psychological. Of the ten designed for leadership, six survived the Troubles and the Plague; damned high survival. You're the most promising. To be the on-site leader of the Uruguay Project. And that's beside the fact that you grew up speaking and reading Spanish in your foster parents' home."

"On-site leader of the Uruguay Project?"

The president nodded.

"You know a lot about me, Mr. President. I suppose you know that my foster father put a certain amount of pressure on me to attend West Point. And couldn't even get me to do a full ROTC in college. I'd seen enough of the army, and heard enough, growing up on army bases." He smiled wryly. "What I grew up liking was the mountains and wild country around Fort Huachuca and Fort Richardson."

"Right. You did do two years of Army ROTC out of respect for Colonel Cordero, but only two. Four would have entailed a hitch in the army afterward. I'm not talking about making you a general though. The army'd have a harder time swallowing that than what I have in mind. No, I want you to be my personal representative, my minister plenipotentiary in charge of the project on the ground. I wouldn't expect you to take actual military command, but you'd be the top man in strategy and policy—and my personal representative. If you needed to order the generals, overrule them, you'd have the authority.

"First you'd get trained and tutored out the kazoo; it'll be three years at least before we make our move. By that time you'll know as much about Uruguay as Leroux does, Mazinni's viceroy there."

Cordero's body quickened as the president talked.

"I don't foresee any extreme difficulties in military operations," Kollar went on. "Uruguay's neither mountainous, forested, nor swampy, and the Argentinians there aren't well armed or disciplined, or particularly well led, though they are seasoned fighting men. The hardest part will be not antagonizing the Uruguayan people. Any more than the minimum that goes with an uninvited army on someone else's soil."

"Mr. President, my name is Ron Cordero, not Jesus Christ or Abraham Lincoln."

Inwardly, Cordero found himself excited by what Kollar had told him, which made no sense to him at all. He tried to shake it off. "I'm sorry, sir, but—the answer is no. It's not something I'm—willing to do."

"I don't want your answer now, Ron. I want it when the hunt is over. After you've had a chance to sleep on it."

You mean you don't want a no answer, Cordero thought. If I'd said yes, you'd have jumped on it and called it a contract.

The offer, and his inexplicable internal response to it, had shaken him. What was it Melody had said? "Don't let anything happen to you out there?" And it was happening, or trying to.

* * *

At 1415 they reached the draw the tiger had been following twelve hours earlier, but they were to intercept him at a point twenty-five kilometers farther north. He'd hardly have doubled back north; that didn't fit his foraging pattern, nor that of any other large predator that Cordero knew of. He might have left the drainage and moved to another, but the best bet was that he hadn't. Judging by his usual rate of travel, he'd pass through late that afternoon or in the evening—unless he made a kill somewhere along the way.

Cordero moistened a finger and held it up. It cooled toward the west; what little breeze there was had shifted around from the south. The tiger wouldn't be afraid of men—he'd probably never seen one till that early morning a week ago—but their odor would be strange to him. It might spook him, or conceivably cause him to circle round to investigate them from the rear.

So they crossed the draw to be downwind of him. In the bottom, in the narrow strip of young cottonwoods, they stopped to water their animals and fill their canteens. Then, after leaving the draw again, they left Ruud, the saddle horses and the pack mule, well away from any cover. Ruud was to make camp there and wait, his tracy on to stay in touch.

Cordero and Kollar hiked along the rim on foot, leading the bait nag. A couple of kilometers north, Cordero saw a promising setup. The slope was mostly open, the bottom Cottonwood. Near the top was an aspen copse about ten meters in diameter.

They hiked down to the copse's lower edge, and leaving the president there, Cordero led the bait nag another forty meters downslope. It lay down on command, as trained, and Cordero threw quick hitches around the left legs, front and rear, leaving it unable to rise.

Then, after relieving himself, Cordero walked back up to the copse, and the two men made themselves as comfortable as they could, back just within the fringe of the saplings. They weren't actually screened from below, but their outlines were obscured, and the dry aspen leaves in the copse would warn them of any approach from behind.

"Now comes the hard part," Cordero whispered. "We may have to sit here till tomorrow, and one of us needs to be awake at all times. Now's a good time to relieve yourself, back in the thicket aways. The odds of the tiger coming along will keep getting higher until he gets here."

"I took care of that while you were working on the nag."

"Okay. If you need to eat or drink, keep your movements slow and even. You probably grew up hunting whitetalls; the same things apply.

"And you can figure he hears better than we do, so if there's anything we need to say to each other, the sooner the better."

The president nodded, saying nothing.

The afternoon went slowly. The breeze was slight and the sun warm for men in down jackets. It was hard not to doze. When he found himself nodding, Cordero nudged the president, caught his eye, made sure that Kollar was truly awake, then slowly lay back on the leaf-covered ground and napped. To be nudged awake in his turn.

When it was he who watched, thoughts drifted through his mind. Why me!? was one. I've got no military experience, no diplomatic experience. No leadership experience, beyond being the senior field biologist over eleven other field biologists scattered around who don't need much supervision.

The answer, of course, was: the government, at considerable expense, had genetically engineered people for leadership. According to the psych tests—whatever they were worth—he was the best of them, good enough to suit Ed Kollar. And in three years he could learn a lot.

Another question was why am I interested? My God! All the while I was growing up, there was one thing I knew for sure: I wanted nothing to do with the military. Now—if it weren't for Melody, I might have said "yes" back there.

The answer to that was ready, too, as if he'd known it all along: From infancy, he'd heard his foster father's occasional comments to his foster mother on the politics—the cronyism, backbiting, backstabbing—within the officer strata.

These comments, when he had them, would be voiced at the end of the day, while hanging up his blouse and tie, to he elaborated over the ritual cocktail that followed. To Al Cordero, these things did not ruin or drastically degrade the military experience. They were simply something he found distasteful. Dishonorable. He eschewed such behavior himself, fulfilling his duties proficiently and responsibly, using his training, experience, and common sense as far as regulation and policy allowed. And covered his ass only when it didn't infringe on his sense of honor.

Retiring with no regrets, respected. And a bird colonel, a rank attained by few.

Nonetheless, it had been those comments and stories that had turned Ron Cordero against a military career. It had not been pacifism, or unwillingness to exercise authority, or disdain for patriotism. True he'd never liked the idea of living his life within the constraints of military regulations, orders, and demands. But the force behind his attitude had been a childhood reaction he'd never examined before. Now, sitting in an aspen copse in a Montana afternoon, waiting for a sabertooth tiger, he realized this.

So. And what lies behind the attraction of Kollar's offer? he asked himself. The Federation planned to invade a foreign country that neither threatened nor offended it. Three foreign countries eventually. Where was the ethics in that? Why should it attract him?

Kollar would say that Uruguay was already ruled by foreigners, plundered by them. Ruled by one and raided by another. The scene resembled somewhat that in China a century and a half earlier: Arrogant foreigners plundering. Disorder and death. The Federation had the potential to improve the situation dramatically for the people there.

If they'd accept them. A helluvan if. And Kollar considered him the best chance for getting it done! If there was a chance. The challenge outranked any other he could think of.

Except, he insisted, I'm not going to do it. So once more then: What is there about it that attracts . . . It struck him then. I had a purpose, a reason for being, and it was poisoned for me. So I looked around for something else, and found this.

And now there was Melody, and an oath. "To love and to honor, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death do us part."

These thoughts, these discourses, did not control Cordero's attention. He heard the tiny rustling when a vole or deermouse moved about in the dry aspen leaves. Heard a raven croak overhead, to be answered by another off north somewhere. Occasionally the breeze puffed harder, rattling the few adhering aspen leaves. Now and then the bait nag snorted softly, and once it struggled to get up.

Both men pulled their hat brims down to shield their eyes as the sun lowered in front of them, gilding the bands of clouds there. The light had begun to fade a little, and carefully, quietly, Cordero took the night sight from his pack, fixing it to his Remington. When that was done, Kollar did the same for his rifle. The clouds reddened to vivid pink, to rose, then faded to gold-trimmed purple. The two hunters relied more and more on their ears.

For a while they were not sleepy. Then the president nudged Cordero and lay back to nap. Cordero seemed to shift into a higher state, one he could not recall experiencing before. He was keenly alert, and no thoughts drifted into his mind. He could hear the brook muttering a hundred meters down the slope. The soft even breathing of the man beside him. The increased rodent activity. There was a tiny squeak, in a pitch barely discernible to his ears; it seemed to him that a shrew must have killed somewhere ahead in the grass.

After a time the condition faded, and eventually he poked Ed Kollar, who sat up silently, his face featureless in the darkness, to look at him. Cordero lay back and went to sleep.

* * *

And awakened to a sharp jab! He sat up, senses abruptly keen. It seemed to him that just before he'd wakened, he'd heard the bait nag snort, but just now there was nothing.

Or—there was a sound, soft, undefined, off to his left. Another to his right, and another—and another at the rear of the copse: paws tentatively pressing leaves.

He knew exactly what caused the sounds, unlikely as it seemed. They'd moved in from upslope, from the east, and smelled hunters and horse; had come to investigate and make their kill. His hand slipped not to his rifle—it wasn't the weapon for a close quarters melee—nor to a skunk bomb, but to the Magnum on his belt. Then—

He yelled! Abruptly! Wildly! and jumped out of the copse, pistol in hand. In every direction, lions grunted, crouched, or bounded a few uncertain leaps. A lioness charged low, and he fired point blank, saw her skid headlong; heard the ear-blasting wham of Kollar's heavy, high-velocity rifle; something massive slammed into him from behind, sending him sprawling, crushing him down. Huge, heavy, foul-breathed, with muscles jerking powerfully in death. He heard another rifle blast, and the jerking stopped.

After a few seconds he decided he wasn't injured. He wriggled his way free, and on hands and knees, turned to see. A male lion, enormous-looking this close, lay inert beside him, head massive, mouth sagging open, teeth not Neo-smilodon's sabers but impressive enough. Suddenly Cordero's heart was thuttering.

"Are you all right, Cordero?"

The lions, he decided, had almost surely fled. "I think so, yeah. Yeah, I'm all right." The slight pain in his chest, he realized, was the tracy in his shirt pocket. He'd fallen on it. Standing up, he scanned around. The bait nag was struggling to rise. Nothing else moved. He stepped into the copse, picked up his Remington, and stepped back out, holding it in his hands instead of slinging it.

"The place for us is in the open," he said, "in case they come back. We can forget about the tiger tonight. We'll try again tomorrow."

The president grunted. "To hell with the tiger. This guy'll do." He poked the lion with his boot. "Now that I look at him, I wish I hadn't had to shoot the big, beautiful sonofabitch."

Cordero nodded. Chances were, the big male had had good years ahead of him, of hunting and siring, of sleeping in the sun in summer and holing up in snow drifts in winter. It weighed, he felt sure, better than three hundred kilos—far bigger than anything in Africa—and its soft coat was thick and warm.

"You want to ride back in the chopper with the trophy?" he asked. "Or on horseback?"

"The chopper. And I want you to come out with me."

Cordero reached inside his down jacket, brought out his tracy, and switched it on.

"Charlie, are you there?"

"Yeah. I heard the shooting. The H&H, right? Did he get his tiger?"

"Not a tiger, Charlie. A pair of lions, one of them a trophy. A whole pride was stalking us, and we didn't know it till they were all around us. The president saved my ass; I had to crawl out from under the big male he shot.

"Look. They may decide to visit you. If they do, they'll be excited, wound up. Pump up your Coleman and light it. Then make sure the picket pins are driven all the way to China, and be ready to do some shooting. To scare them. Don't shoot to kill unless they press the issue.

"When the lamp is lit and you're satisfied with the picket pins, get on the M-3 and call headquarters for the chopper, with men to load the lions. "Got that?"

"Got it."

"Also have them bring out someone to ride back in with you. Per policy. The president and I will fly back in the chopper.

"And Charlie, don't say anything about what happened. Tell them we've got two lions to take out with us, and that everything's fine. No use getting Melody all upset, or the Secret Service guys either."

"Right, Ron. That all?"

"That's it. I'm off the air but wearing my plug."

Cordero put the tracy back in his shirt pocket, leaving the ear button in place. "Too bad your tiger didn't come along first."

"Ron, I didn't really come out here for a tiger. It was the last step in vetting you. Call it a job interview. And a chance to see you work. It was too important to leave to someone else."

Cordero looked hard at him. The president gestured at the big male lion. "You know what, Cordero?" he said. "You owe me. You know that. You owe me and so does Melody."

"Mr. President, that is a lousy goddamn point of view."

Kollar laughed. "I got that, Cordero. But it's also the truth. And having told me off that way, you look better than ever for the job."

Cordero brushed aside the compliment. "Mr. President, it may be true in your mind that I owe you. But what counts is, is it true in mine?"

He said little more then, just squatted by the lion and waited. Thinking. About Melody and a lot of things. About the kind of president that would do what this one had, in the past and in the future. An hour later he heard the chopper and called it to give the pilot a location fix. Minutes later it was on the ground. While the president helped the crew load the two lions, Cordero talked to the man it had brought out, an old cowboy and sometime logger, telling him where Charlie was. He was to take the bait nag with him. The chopper would follow, in case the lions got interested.

Then Cordero got in the chopper with the president. Two Secret Service men were there; Cordero ignored them. "Eddy," he called to the pilot, "hold off on the racket a minute, okay?"

"Sure, Ron. Tell me when."

"Mr. President," Cordero said. "I'll admit you've got my interest. But there's no way I'd even consider it unless you—we—can convince my wife. Which will take some doing if it's possible at all. And I mean convince her, not bulldoze her. She's got to feel all right about it."

"Fair enough."

Cordero raised an eyebrow at the president's casual reaction. "She may get a little fierce."

"I'm prepared for that. Loren and I talked about things when he was in the District week before last. And we brainstormed it with Lissa last night after supper."

Cordero stared at him. Christ! I'll bet you did at that. Well. If you want me that badly, and if Melody agrees, and if I decide to do it, I won't be shy about demanding things my way.

"Okay, Eddy," he called, "any time."

The starter whined. The rotors began to turn, gained speed, and after a minute the chopper lifted. Cordero felt a brief emptiness, a sense of leaving a life behind.

Whoa there! he said to himself. You haven't decided to do it yet. But it seemed to him he had. If Melody agreed. If this life was over for him, it was because he had another to go to, the one he'd been born for. And that, it seemed to him, was something Melody would understand, given a little time.

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Framed