"Will I be able to do this when we're out in the Project?" Farmer asked, setting Baron back on his wooden perch.
"What do you mean, Ben?"
"Well, Doc, some people say that I won't be able to keep birds once we're out there, 'cuz it interferes, like. Hell, I take good care of my birds-you know, captive raptors live two, three times as long as the ones in the wild, and, yeah, I know that upsets things a little bit, but, damn it-"
"Ben, it's not big enough to worry about. I understand you and the hawks, okay? I like 'em, too."
"Nature's own smart bomb, Doc. I love to watch 'em work. And when they get hurt, I know how to fix 'em."
"You're very good at that. All your birds look healthy."
"Oughta be. I feed 'em good. I live-trap mice for 'em. They like their meals warm, y'know?" He walked back to his worktable, took his gauntlet off, and hung it on the hook. "Anyway, that's my work for the morning."
"Okay, get on home, Ben. I'll see that the computer room is secured. Let's not have any more subjects taking any walks."
"Yes, sir. How's Henry doing?" Farmer asked, fishing in his pocket for his car keys.
"Henry checked out."
"I didn't figure he had much time left. So, no more of the winos, eh?" He saw the shake of Killgore's head. "Well, too bad for him. Tough bastard, wasn't he?"
"Sure was, Ben, but that's the way it goes."
"Sure 'nuff, Doc. Shame we can't just lay the body out for the buzzards. They have to eat, too, but it is kinda gross to watch how they do it." He opened the door. "See you tonight, Doc."
Killgore followed him out, killing the lights. No, they couldn't deny Ben Farmer the right to keep his birds. Falconry was the real sport of kings, and from it you could learn so much about birds, how they hunted, how they lived. They'd fit into Nature's Great Plan. The problem was that the Project had some really radical people in it, like the ones who objected to having physicians, because they interfered with Nature-curing people of disease was interference, allowed them to multiply too fast and upset the balance again. Yeah, sure. Maybe in a hundred years, more like two hundred, they might have Kansas fully repopulated-but not all of them would remain in Kansas, would they? No, they'd spread out to study the mountains, the wetlands, the rain forests, the African savanna, and then they'd return to Kansas to report what they'd learned, to show their videotapes of Nature in action. Killgore looked forward to that. Like most Project members he devoured the Discovery Channel on his cable system. There was so much to learn, so much to understand, because he, like many, wanted to get the whole thing, to understand Nature in Her entirety. That was a tall order, of course, maybe an unrealistic one, but if he didn't make it, then his children would. Or their children, who'd be raised and educated to appreciate Nature in all her glory. They'd travel about, field scientists all. He wondered what the ones who went to the dead cities would think… It'd probably be a good idea to make them go, so that they'd understand how many mistakes man had made and learn not to repeat them. Maybe he'd lead some of those field trips himself. New York would be the big one, the really impressive don't-do-this lesson. It would take a thousand years, maybe more, before the buildings collapsed from rusting structural steel and lack of maintenance… The stone parts would never go away, but relatively soon, maybe ten years or so, deer would return to Central Park.
The vultures would do just fine for some time. Lots of bodies to eat… or maybe not. At first the corpses would be buried in the normal civilized way, but in a few weeks those systems would be overwhelmed, and then people would die, probably in their own beds and then-rats, of course. The coming year would be a banner one for rats. The only thing was: Rats depended on people to thrive. They lived on garbage and the output of civilization, a fairly specialized parasite, and this coming year they'd have a gut-filling worldwide feast and then-what? What would happen to the rat population? Dogs and cats would live off them, probably, gradually reaching a balance of some sort, but without millions of people to produce garbage for the rats to eat, their numbers would decline over the next five or ten years. That would be an interesting study for one of the field teams. How quickly would the rat population trend down, and how far down might it go?
Too many of the people in the Project concerned themselves with the great animals. Everyone loved wolves and cougars, noble beautiful animals so harshly slaughtered by men because of their depredation of domestic animals. And they'd do just fine once the trapping and poisoning stopped. But what of the lesser predators? What about the rats? Nobody seemed to care about them, but they were part of the system, too. You couldn't apply aesthetics to the study of Nature, could you? If you did, then how could you justify killing Mary Bannister, Subject F4? She was an attractive, bright, pleasant woman, after all, not very like Chester, or Pete, or Henry, not offensive to behold as they had been… but like them, a person who didn't understand Nature, didn't appreciate her beauty, didn't see her place in the great system of life, and was therefore unworthy to participate. Too bad for her. Too bad for all the test subjects, but the planet was dying, and had to be saved, and there was only one way to do it, because too many others had no more understanding of the system than the lower animals who were an unknowing part of the system itself. Only man could hope to understand the great balance. Only man had the responsibility to sustain that balance, and if that meant the reduction of his own species, well, everything had its price. The greatest and finest irony of all was that it required a huge sacrifice, and that the sacrifice came from man's own scientific advances. Without the instrumentalities that threatened to kill the planet, the ability to save it would not have existed. Well, of such irony was reality made, the epidemiologist told himself.
The Project would save Nature Herself, and the Project was made of relatively few people, less than a thousand, plus those who had been selected to survive and continue the effort, the unknowing ones whose lives would not be forfeit to the crimes committed in their names. Most would never understand the cause for their survival-that they were the wife or child or close relative of ii Project member, or had skills that the Project needed: airplane pilots, mechanics, farmers, communication specialists, and the like. Someday they might figure it out that was inevitable, of course. Some people talked, and others listened. When the listeners figured it out, they would probably be horrified, but then it would be far too late for them to do anything about it. There was a wonderful inevitability to it all. Oh, there would be some things he'd miss. The theater, the good restaurants in New York, for example, but surely there would be some good cooks in the Project-certainly there would be wonderful raw materials for them to work with. The Project's installation in Kansas would grow all the grain they needed, and there would be cattle as well, until the buffalo spread out.
The Project would support itself by hunting for much of its meat. Needless to say, some members objected to that - they objected to killing anything, but cooler and wiser heads had prevailed on that issue. Man was both a predator and a toolmaker, and so guns were okay, too. A far more merciful way to kill game, and man had to eat, too. And so, in a few years men would saddle up their horses and ride out to shoot a few buffalo, butcher them, and bring back the healthy low-fat meat. And deer, and pronghorn antelope, and elk.
Cereals and vegetables would be grown by the farmers. They'd all eat well, and live in harmony with Nature guns weren't all that great an advancement on bows and arrows, were they?-and they'd be able to study the natural world in relative peace.
It was a beautiful future to look forward to, though the initial four to eight months would be pretty dreadful. The stuff that'd be on TV, and the radio, and the newspapers-while they lasted would be horrible, but again, everything had a price. Humanity as the dominant force on the planet had to die, to be replaced by Nature herself, with just enough of the right people to observe and appreciate what she was and what she did.