The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

I watched them dismally. I had been here two days and gotten some great footage but I knew almost nothing. It was time to start checking deep background.

Every HIR has his own techniques. I like to get just enough background to understand what I’m looking at before I start to interview the subject. This way the material always feels fresh. Other people do things differently. I know one HIR who won’t interview a subject without knowing everything down to the family tree.

My technique, though, is predicated on the subject cooperating. Usually it works out. Even people who are hostile to the idea will cooperate in some way-anger and hate are a form of emotional contact after all. It wasn’t working here. It wasn’t that Jack disliked cooperating. He just didn’t care. Somewhere in the back of people is a need to talk about themselves. It’s basic to our makeup. It’s fundamental. Jack didn’t seem to have it; he was just being polite. It was time I looked into alternatives. As I said, I was wired into the North American Communications Grid through my tent. Sam was only a few numbers away.

I could tell from the furniture behind him that Sam was in his office. His eyes were red and his expression surly. He was probably drunk.

“What do you want?”

“To talk to you. Jack’s not the only story here, you know.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

I smiled at him. “You’re part of this, too. After all, you run Beck-Lewis. He lives in your backyard, so to speak. You knew all about him. Why did you let him stay here?”

Sam didn’t say anything for a moment. “Didn’t want to arrest him. We grew up together.”

“Really?” I had guessed a connection of this sort. “Was he always like this?”

“Like what? Covered with hair? Nowadays, his dick and scrotum retract up into his belly. Did you think he was like that in high school?” Sam reached off camera and pulled back a bottle. “His dad ran the hardware store in Schmidt, north of the lake. He didn’t do very well at it and Jack was always helping out. Jack was almost always busy. He was the kind of kid that you could get to cooperate if you asked him but you’d run into a stone wall if you tried to force him. He hated taking orders or having anyone tell him what to do-it compromised his freedom, I guess. But if you asked him, he’d do everything he could for you.” Sam chuckled softly.

I wanted to yell: but how did he come here? That wouldn’t work. Sam had to tell the story in his own way.

“Whenever he had the chance, he lit out camping,” Sam said. He leaned forward into the screen. “You got to understand that Jack was talented. Look, as soon as he was old enough he got a hunting license. Every deer season he went out with a rifle and bagged the limit. Every time. Some guys go for years before they bag their first buck. Nobody gets his limit every year. Jack started out using his Dad’s 30-06, an old Springfield. That was too easy. Jack could take down a buck from a mile away and let you pick where to put the hole so it wouldn’t show when it was mounted. After a while, he went to a smaller bore and then to black powder. That got too easy so he went to bow hunting. He was fourteen years old at that point and bringing home a deer every time. Every time. That got too easy so he started stalking them with just a knife.”

Sam shook his head in admiration. “He was still this scrawny kid. He wasn’t that strong, but he was frightfully quick and it was like he could get inside the head of the game.”

“Deer hunting with a knife?”

“I think he could have got an elk, too, if he’d have tried.” Sam said with satisfaction. “You figure a two-hundred pound deer is one thing. A six-hundred or a thousand-pound elk is entirely different. Then, he quit hunting all at once. He said it just wasn’t fair. Instead, he started counting coup.”

“Counting coup?”

“Funny, eh? He’d go out there and get as close as he could and touch them on the head, or slap them or cut off a piece of tail or an ear. Not just elk but cougar and bear.”

“Bear? How did he do that?”

Sam laughed. “That wasn’t easy. He came back one time tore up so bad he looked like the only things holding him together were strings. But he had a piece of a grizzly’s ear.”

This was starting to sound like a tall tale. Pretty soon Sam would have Jack riding a tornado. “Did he count coup on wolves?”

“We didn’t have many wolves back then,” Sam said quietly. “He left them pretty much alone. I don’t know why. Then, he quit counting coup.”

“It got too easy?”