Killing a Tiger

High Saturn Orbit, 2554: Rodion watched the red marker tick across the display with each sweep. The unidentified object had been using the inner planets to accelerate its departure from the solar system, toward some distant home the astrogators had not yet discerned. They hypothesized that the object had spent at least three years within the Solar System. Its dark carapace and razor-thin profile meant it would only ever be discovered when it kicked on its exotic engine and accelerated into deep space. The science officers debated it, but Rodion knew, it was the first sign of intelligent life. Humanity was not alone.

Rodion imagined how the object had drifted through human space collecting radio transmissions from Earth, Luna and Mars, analyzing and cataloging human technological sophistication, defensive capabilities and modes of thought. And now, its databanks full, the object was leaving without a word.

At first they thought it was a missile. Reacting, Rodion ordered the rail cannon charged and the object targeted. He wondered how long this probe had traveled. How many other solar systems had it stalked? If he were to open its databanks, how many other civilizations would he find there? It would be obscene to destroy such a thing, this herald of new life. What threat could the object pose when there is such abundance of resources and energy throughout the universe?

He stared at the hazy pixelated blur on the telescopic sights, at a product of minds not human. His heart trilled at the thought of the object’s owners one day returning to welcome humanity into the galactic community.

Still, he had belayed two requests to de-charge the rail cannon and disengage target-lock. Some idea, buried deep in his mind, prevented Rodion from standing down. There was a fear hanging in his belly that told him this probe was a predator. An old fear. He could destroy the object now if he wished and humanity would stay hidden in its pocket of the universe until a time of its choosing. Or he could let it go and reveal humanity to these unknown stalkers.

Amur Forest, Russian Far East, 2543: Rodion chose to spend his leave hunting and fishing in the Amur. He’d grown up in the far eastern town of Khabarovsk where his father used to take him boating on the Amur River. Rodion hired a man named Saveliy who worked in counter-poaching for the Oblast and guided under the table. A rotocopter carried them 160 km into the forest.

They had been trekking along a tributary when Saveliy stopped them near a small pile of dirty snow. He pointed at a paw print fifteen centimeters across. “Tiger. Adult male. In the neighborhood,” Saveliy pointed out. The idea of being close to such a rare and powerful creature excited Rodion, but when he stood up, Saveliy’s face was tight. “We have to kill it,” the guide said.

“What? Why?”

Saveliy scanned the far embankment, looking for signs. “Little game left in forest today. If wind changes, we will be hunted.”

“I thought you were supposed to stop poaching?”

“No. I stop tigers from poaching humans.”

Saveliy routed them through the forest, but when they lost the tiger’s tracks he resolved to keep them upwind.

That night they discovered the corpse of a rare deer scavenged by birds. Saveliy chased them off and inspected the carcass. It had been killed in the last thirty-six hours by the same tiger they spotted earlier.

“So it’s full,” Rodion said. “It’ll leave us alone. No problem.”

“Yes problem,” Saveliy countered. “Nature made tigers to hunt. No matter the weight in their stomachs.”

They were forced to make another detour, attempting to stay upwind of the tiger. Saveliy told Rodion, “Not to worry. We find some decent fishing still. I know a place.”

Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia, 2529: Rodion had wanted to study evolutionary biology and Professor Krupin was the only one in Tomsk who studied it. Rodion didn’t understand the precise work Krupin specialized in, but when Rodion asked him about his lab, Krupin was so thrilled by the curiosity that he gave Rodion a personal tour.

“We study the behavior of insects.” Krupin said. Krupin led him into a room called the menagerie. One wall was stacked to the ceiling with brown plastic tubs containing all sorts of large and angry insects. The other was tiled with cork-board on which dead insects were pinned and preserved. “Their brains are very simple, which makes it easier to understand which neurons and pathways contribute to and cause behavior.” Krupin pulled out one of the plastic bins. Inside was a ten centimeter bush cricket, a large green-carapaced bug that slammed itself against the walls. “These guys are aggressive.”

Krupin went on to talk about how they were surgically altering neurons in the brains of crickets to try to change their innate behavior. As he was explaining and pointing at the tiny circuit board transmitter attached to the cricket’s head, his thumb nudged the release and the bin’s hatch sprung open. The cricket and professor noticed the mistake at the same time. The cricket leaped for freedom. Krupin slammed the lid down and caught the cricket halfway up the abdomen. It tumbled to the ground, landing on its back. Krupin and Rodion saw that the cricket’s abdomen had split open from the impact. Krupin swore. They watched as out of the abdomen bloomed intestines and fatty tissue. Without hesitation, the cricket began pulling its own viscera into its mouth, stuffing its small head with its own insides. Rodion watched with disgust and confusion. Krupin dispatched the bug, cleaned up its entrails and tossed it in the trash.

After the cricket was removed, Rodion he found the words to express his confusion. “Why would it eat itself? How could it not feel that?”

Krupin smiled and launched into a long lecture of the selection pressures on all multicellular organisms. It came down to the fact that fat was hard to come by in nature, so the cricket evolved a behavior to consume it wherever it was found. “Never bothered to evolve the behavior not to consume its own fat,” Krupin laughed. “Evolution is not interested in rationality. Just survival.”

Amur Forest, Russian Far East, 2543: Saveliy found a nice river for them to fish. It was one of the few places the canopy opened and Rodion could see the sky. Rodion spent the day in the stream fishing. Never mind that nothing was biting and there wasn’t anything larger than juvenile perch. He was enjoying his leave. The tiger was long from his mind. He found a nice eddy where the water was shaded and still and began pulling up perch. He was looking to freeze some to keep for a nice treat next time his stomach got tired of the high-protein mix they serve on spacecraft.

Saveliy fished with him until lunch, then went back upstream to their camp to fetch more bait. A few minutes after Saveliy left, the wind shifted to the south and sprayed water in Rodion’s face. He waded closer to shore where he was less exposed to the wind. When Saveliy didn’t return, Rodion figured he must have gotten tired and taken a rest at the campsite. Good. The guide spent too much time by himself and had forgotten how to have a conversation. Might as well just be alone, thought Rodion.

When the sun met the horizon, Rodion packed up his fishing rod, waders and pail of fish and hiked back to camp.

As Rodion approached the camp, he found Saveliy’s fishing pole laying across the path. Ahead, his backpack sat face-down in the mud, its contents spewed across the ferns and rocks. Rodion crept forward. He saw the wall of their teal tent flapping in the wind. A large red stain blotted the fabric. Saveliy was gone. All that Rodion found was a trail of blood leading into the forest.

Saveliy was right. The tiger would still hunt. It hunted not because it was hungry but because it couldn’t help itself. It evolved for survival, not moderation. Especially now, when the forests were tightening, the only tigers one would expect to find were the best hunters, those that were the most hungry.

Rodion was alone now. No wise guide to help him find his way out, what to avoid, what to trust, how to survive. He understood the tiger then. Nature rewarded only survivors. The fish in his pail were more than he could eat today. But still he caught them.

High Saturn Orbit, 2554: Captain Rodion turned to his weapons officer and gave his order.