50 in 50

They were boars, twins from the same litter, and weighed over one thousand pounds apiece. An ordinary wild boar will weigh up to seven hundred and fifty pounds and is the fastest, most dangerous, and worst-tempered beast ever known. Curly and Moe were mutants, a third again heavier than their wild ancestors, and many times as intelligent. But nothing else had changed; they were still just as fast, dangerous, and bad-tempered. Their ten-inch tusks were capped with stainless steel to prevent them from splitting.

"I want you to stay here with Queeny, Moe, and she'll be in charge."

Moe squealed in anger and tossed his great head. Bron grabbed a handful of hide and thick bristles between Moe's shoulder blades, the boar's favorite itch spot, and twisted and pummeled it. Moe blurbled happily through his nose. Moe was a pig genius, which made him on the human level a sort of retarded moron — except that he wasn't human. Jle understood simple orders and would obey them within the limits of his capacity.

"Stay and guard, Moe, stay and guard. Watch Queeny; she knows what is best. Guard, don't kill. Plenty of good things to eat here — and candy when I get back. Curly goes with me, and everyone gets candy when we come back." There were happy grunts from all directions, and Queeny pressed her fat side against his leg.

"You're coming too, Jasmine," Bron said. "A good walk will keep you out of trouble. Go get Maisie Mule-Foot; the exercise will do her good too."

Jasmine was his problem child. Though she looked only like a half-grown shoat, she was a full-grown Pitman-Moore miniature — one of a strain of small pigs that had originally been developed for use in laboratories. They had been bred for intelligence, and Jasmine probably had the highest IQ ever to have come out of the lab. But there was a handicap: With the intelligence went an instability, an almost human hysteria, as though her mind were balanced on a sharp edge. If she were left with the other pigs she would tease and torture them and cause trouble, so Bron made sure that she was with him if he had to be away from the herd for any length of time.

Maisie was a totally different case: a typical, well-rounded sow— a Mule-Foot, a general-purpose breed. Her intelligence was low — or pig normal — and her fecundity high. Some cruel people might have said she was good only for bacon. But she had a pleasant personality and was a good mother; in fact she had just weaned her last litter. Bron took her along to give her some relief from her weanling progeny — and also to run some fat off her, since she had grown uncommonly plump during the confined space voyage.

Bron examined his maps and found what appeared to be an old logging road that ran in the direction in which he wanted to go, almost as far as the plateau. He and the pigs could go across country easily enough, but they might save some time by following the road. He set his pocket gyrocompass by lining it up with the arms of the control tower's weather vane, then worked out a heading that would reach the road that led to the Ghost Plateau. He pointed his arm in the correct direction, and Curly put his head down and catapulted into the undergrowth. There was a snapping and crackling as he tore his way through — the perfect pathfinder, who made his own openings where none were available.

It was an easy walk as the grass-covered road wound up through the hills. The logging camp must have been closed down for a long time, because the road was free of wheel ruts. The pigs snuffled in the rich grass, grabbing an occasional bite of something too tempting to resist, although Maisie wheezed complaints about the unaccustomed exertion. There were some trees along the road, but for the most part the land was cleared and planted with crops. Curly stopped, wheeled, and pointed into a thick growth of woods, rumbling a questioning grunt. Jasmine and Maisie stopped next to him, looking in the same direction, heads cocked and listening.

"What is it? What's in there?" Bron asked. It was nothing dangerous, that was clear, since if there had been a threat Curly would have gone charging to the attack. With their more acute hearing the pigs were listening to something he could not hear, something that interested but did not frighten them.

"Let's go," he said. "There's plenty of walking ahead." He pushed against Curly's side, — but he could have accomplished just as much as by shoving against a stone wall. Curly, unmoving, scratched with a forehoof and tossed his head in the direction of the trees.

"All right, if you insist. I never argue with boars who weigh over half a ton. Let's go see what's in there." He grabbed a handful of thick bristles and hide, and Curly started off among the trees.

Before they had gone fifty yards, Bron could hear the sound himself — a bird or a small animal of some kind, calling shrilly. But why should this bother the pigs? Then, suddenly, he realized what it was.

"That's a child — crying! Come on, Curly!"