Trophy Grove Read online

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  “That’s it! Pack it all back up!”

  I’m madly running all about the hunting camp, desperately capturing all the snapshots of the canvas tents that I can before the mudders begin disassembling them and packing them back into their crates. The galaxy hasn’t seen one of Teddy Jackson’s legendary safari camps for decades. Harold Higgins would have a difficult time locating anyone among his subscribers who didn’t own one of those coffee-table books brimming with photographs taken during Teddy’s golden era of great hunts. People back home just can’t get enough photographs of the big tents standing on strange, alien landscapes, of the bonfires preparing fresh game, of the giant weapons wielded to fall the largest of the galaxy’s animals. People are hungry to see what those old hunts had been like before they vanished following the passage of the League’s Law of Extermination. People want to see pictures of game being dressed in the field, of hunters sitting cross-legged on rich carpets at night to sip at whiskey as they tell tales of their hunt’s adventures, of the piles of strange, curving tusks and bones. Those picture books of the golden age of Teddy Jackson’s safari remain all the rage, and the demand for new editions keeps many a publisher in business. Harold Higgins reminded me many times before I stepped upon the rocket that would hurl me beyond Earth’s pull that he expected me to return with enough photographs of Teddy’s camp to produce a new coffee-table book. He’s expecting my story of Teddy and Marlena’s adventure to forever put his tabloid’s accounts into the profitable black, and he’s going to milk this expedition for all it’s worth.

  Unfortunately, the grove refuses to cooperate. Though Teddy’s mudders planted the first tent pole a very safe distance from the jungle, and though the mudders hurried to quickly erect the camp, the grove has advanced towards our position at such a fast rate that our expedition’s threatened to become overwhelmed before I get the chance to gather enough pictures to satisfy my editor.

  Marlena ruins a shot by pulling at my shoulder just as I click the shutter on my camera.

  “Would you know how to work this thing, Zane?”

  The camera that Marlena holds out towards me looks to be at least three centuries old, with all kinds of cryptic knobs and buttons.

  I shake my head. “I haven’t a clue. Where did you find that thing?”

  “My father wants me to use it,” Marlena grunts as she fidgets with a dial on her camera that doesn’t seem to have any effect. “He told me this old camera would somehow do a better job of capturing the glow the grove throws over everything. He thinks this antique will do a better job capturing all the shadow and light. If only I knew the first thing about it.”

  “I wish I could help, but I’m just a writer. These new cameras do all the work themselves. A person had to study a science back in the old days to operate what you’re holding.”

  Marlena sighs. “My father just assumes I must know how to use this camera because I’m an artist.”

  “That’s because he knows how to operate every weapon as a hunter,” I smirk.

  Teddy stands in the center of his hunting camp as the mudders race to fold the canvas tents quickly enough to slam them back into their trunks. He’s staring at that glowing, orange wall of grove, his hands at his hips as if he’s daring that barricade of ropes and vines to come nearer. I doubt that hunter’s posture is going to give that grove any reason to pause.

  I don’t think Teddy’s at all pleased with this discouraging start to our expedition. From reading all of Teddy’s journals as a boy, I’m very versed in all of Teddy’s hunting strategies. At the top that hunter’s long list of adages rests Teddy’s maxim that the hunters who survive are those who dictate the terms of every hunt. The grove is currently winning the battle to define our hunt’s variables, forcing Teddy to bend his plans to its will.

  “Over here! Hurry before we lose another tent to the grove!”

  I swing my camera towards the mudder targets of Teddy’s ire to see the three Spartan sentries of our expedition race to a tent perched dangerously close to the grove so that their hydraulic strength can assist in moving ammunition crates to a safer location. I snap several shots of the mudders frantically working to pull down that tent. They fail to move quickly enough, and I keep shooting as vines rise from beneath to knot about the poles and canvas before lifting the tent off of the ground and into the grove. The mudders strain against the tent’s ropes as they try to rip the canvas back from the foliage, but the tendrils are too strong, and the grove lifts one more of Teddy’s tents upwards towards the stars.

  “Let it be!” Teddy shouts. “Don’t let that grove twist about your ankles! Work to dismantle the other tents while we still can!”

  Something seems out of place to my finely-tuned radar for the strange. Taking another long look at the grove, I realize that the vines and ropes are not expanding towards us in a regimented line. Rather, the grove sends rivulets of orange cords into our camp as if sniffing and prodding to learn more about what has arrived at its border. A tent to my right at one second appears in jeopardy of becoming the next grove victim; but a moment later, the grove’s cords retreat and remerge to threaten a tent standing someplace else within our camp. I can’t help but think there’s an intelligence testing us, and I can’t help but worry that the obliterators have placed our expedition in danger by withholding secrets from us.

  “There’s only one mudder tent left!” Teddy screams. “Get it packed up with the others before all you stinking clones have to sleep out in the open!”

  My camera and attention are locked onto the grove when the mudders squeeze the last tent into the waiting trunk. But now, that glowing, orange wall doesn’t appear to be advancing towards us at all. There’s not a single cord or vine trespassing into our camp to pull at our motorized wagons or to grip at the crates holding our food supply. Teddy notices that change in the grove’s behavior as well as I do. He stands silent and still for many moments while the mudders try to slow their panting while waiting to learn what they’ll be asked to do next.

  Teddy gives it to the mudders just as they’re about to catch their breaths. “Take it all back out! Put it all back up! We’ll still sleep in our tents!”

  The mudders never complain. Their breeding doesn’t give them the chance to be discontented, and a mudder’s blood makes it nearly impossible for them to bitch and moan. They hurry about and reopen all the expedition’s supply trunks, frantic to unfurl canvasses and to untangle any knots their quick disassembly of the hunting camp produced such a short time earlier. Quicker than before, Teddy’s hunting camp rises on the featureless ground resting at the face of the glowing, orange grove. The mudders again unfold all the carpets, and I hurry to gather my shots of the glorious safari once more undertaken on an alien world, just as mudders start the fires that will bubble their cauldrons of mudder stew.

  But then, the grove seeps again into camp to send all the mudders into another round of scurrying to put everything back into the trunks while Teddy Jackson screams orders at their backs. This time, we lose the last of the mudders’ sleeping tents and a crate of Teddy’s favorite whiskey. Just as it did before, the grove retreats the moment the last tent is stuffed into its box.

  And one more time, Teddy lets his mudders catch their breaths before shouting that same command.

  “Take it all back out! Put it all back up!”

  Marlena turns to me on the fourth round of such madness. “We haven’t taken the first step into the grove, and he’s already lost his mind.”

  I smile. “Your father’s only fighting to establish the first terms of our hunt. He’s already fighting whatever it is we’ve been sent to kill.”

  Marlena’s eyes fill with excitement. I hope she doesn’t think mine are filling with fear.

  “We’ve found a sophisticated intelligence out here, haven’t we Zane?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  No man, woman or mudder gets a wink of sleep that night as Teddy’s hunting camp rises and falls. Come m
orning, Teddy’s tents stand as the rising sun dims the glow of the orange grove. Teddy thinks he’s won the first battle, but I think the grove is laughing. Our mudders are already exhausted as they find places on the ground for sleeping, and they’re too exhausted to even prepare the mudder stew their bodies are going to need because of the exertion that’s behind and ahead of them. Yet Teddy thinks he’s still established his terms.

  I doubt he has. I think the grove has pushed us all to our limits before we set a single foot into its domain.

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