Chapter Text
Without a care in the world, the mischievous joeys ran about and played noisily in their pen. Aelia, a handsome rather than beautiful chimp, did all their worrying for them. She watched them play and smiled. Her dark brown eyes gleamed when she spoke with passion of her life’s work.
Once, the Western Forests had teemed with men. Man mobs had roamed at will and raided the carefully tended ape orchards and fields. Hunting to limit men’s numbers and depredations had once been central to Simian culture.
Now, hunting had ended except in books and movies. The forests still prospered. Figs, corkwood trees, and custard apples flourished. Tapirs and marsh deer thrived. Men were more plentiful than ever but they had been trapped and hunted to extinction in the wild.
Apes had domesticated men for millenia and bred them to Simian needs and preferences. Careful breeding had reduced men’s once long years to maturity at the cost of further limiting man's already limited intelligence. Intellectual growth ceased when the men attained full adult size at 3 or 4 years. Some breeds birthed twins reliably. Strong dark-skinned men, almost black, labored long hours under the hot sun on the Southern plantations. Long-legged racing men were bred for speed and endurance. Men had been reduced to a miniature size, not three feet tall, most suitable for house pets.
Aelia believed fiercely that men were wild animals by nature and belonged in the wild. She was no “men are sentient” radical. Simply, she believed that men should live free. Re-establishment of a man population in the wild was the apes’ clear responsibility as stewards of their world. Some woke apes shared her conservationist views and contributed time and money for her cause. Caeso, her husband, a bit amused, supported her fully in her work.
Some argued that domesticated men were far better off, well fed and cared for. Simian civilization had no tolerance for cruelty or animal abuse. Their wild cousins had wandered the forest cold and hungry. They lived in constant terror of dangers, real and imagined, with no one to protect them. Many likely died from starvation, injury, or predation.
“The Wheel of Life!” Aelia snapped back. “Man’s domestication is simply unnatural. Men should live free. Men are resourceful. Nature will select those whose natural instincts are still strong, and weed out the others. The result will be a strong and healthy stock of wild men, just as nature intended!”
Mature men, reared in captivity and long accustomed to Simian care, lacked the necessary attitudes and skills to survive in the wild. However, younger joeys might be gradually weaned from domestication and taught to survive.
Joeys were not expensive. Men bred prolifically and some number was always destined for culling. Breeders prized the timid and obedient. Aelia’s goals were quite different. Aelia and her colleagues wanted energetic men who might survive in the wild.
They taught their charges to care for themselves, to find their own food and water. Over the first several months, they offered native fruit, seeds, berries, and nuts to the men in their pens instead of the usual man feed. The men quickly learned to use stones to crack open tough panda nuts and kola nuts. Oil palm nuts were nutritious and less of a challenge. They fought boisterously over pans of swarming termites, fat maggots, and squirming beetle grubs
After several months in the pens, they moved the men to the fenced preserve, where they might pick their own fruit and nuts from the trees, and harvest berries from the bushes. The men quickly learned to use sticks to dig for ants, termites, and beetle grubs. Aelia wrinkled her nose in distaste but cheered their progress when she found them picking fat maggots from a decaying rabbit carcass.
They learned to recognize danger. As much as she loved them, they must learn to fear all apes and even her. This was the hardest part. Cruelty, even faux cruelty, did not come easily to her.
Each spring, she and her associates released a dozen or so of men, believed to be ready, into the Western Forest. Each was chipped to monitor his or her movements. Aelia and her helpers opened their cages and beat on trash can covers. The men fled and disappeared into the forest, jacks and jills both. Some of the jills were already pregnant. A few always balked and were driven away with whips and man-goads.
The men could now live exactly as nature intended, free of the Simian yoke. Some survived and some did not.
Aelia and her helpers monitored their numbers and maintained feeding stations to ease the transition. Simian access to the forest was severely restricted so that men might live largely undisturbed. Slowly, year by year, the man population increased.
Aelia and her husband kept a cabin in the deep in woods to further her work. The permits had been hard to come by. Far from any road and in forest land prohibiting all-terrain vehicles, they had had the help of a helicopter and a team of men rented from a nearby farmer, to Aelia’s embarrassment. Despite its rustic exterior, its interior boasted the most modern comforts and conveniences. Solar panels and a back-up battery provided electricity to power the lights, refrigerator and freezer. A propane tank supplied the stove. Far from any road, Aelia and Caeso kept a sturdy man to carry in supplies and carry out trash. The cabin offered a comfortable, secure pen.
Campers and hikers reported their sightings. Aelia heard increasing complaints of pilfered campsites. More than once, Aelia found ravaged carcasses of capybara and pudu deer in her wandering. Obviously, the men had learned to work together to run down small game. She was proud of what they had accomplished.
Aelia took it upon herself to stock the feeding stations. Some days, she brought her son Quintus along. Days, she only rarely saw a man and the jack or jill always fled when they saw her – a success. Some mornings, she arose before dawn and hiked to a blind near one of the feeding stations. She smiled to see the thriving men enjoy her hospitality. Some of the jills carried their adorable little joeys. Once, she saw several larger jacks attack a smaller male, rocks in hand, and beat him to death. She resisted the powerful urge to intervene. She watched them rip the battered carcass apart and feed gruesomely. Men were truly animals!
Time passed and men's numbers increased.
Aelia set off for her blind in the dark. She was in position before the first light of dawn. Silently, she just watched when a jill carrying her joey stopped at the feeder and fed. A jack appeared – a young one and again she waited. He would bulk up in a year. Time passed and a second jack appeared. He was hers. She raised her rifle and felt the link with all generations of hunter apes, past and future. One shot and he fell.
Aelia and Caeso reviewed the census numbers and their target had finally been achieved. A date was set in the fall and a strict bag limit was established. Only jacks might be taken. That first year, Aelia was awarded one permit and the others were distributed by lottery to her generous sponsors.
She called Caeso on her cellphone. By the time he arrived, leading their man by a lead attached to her nose ring, she had her jack bled and gutted. His innards lay in a smoking pile in the early morning chill. He was a big one and Aelia, despite her views, was glad they had a strong man to carry his carcass back to the cabin. They loaded him onto their sturdy man. Aelia slapped her butt to urge her along. The man was unclothed, except for her tack, but no one thinks of an animal as naked. She noted the well-healed brand burned into her bare backside. Aelia had retrieved the microchip implanted at the base of her jack’s neck but his body had never been disfigured with an ape's ownership mark.
A full week passed before Aelia visited the feeder again in the hours before dawn. No men were evident. Two weeks later and men had returned, though tentatively and few. A full year would pass before the next hunt. Men were cunning but kept no calendars.
More years passed. Once, all the men in the forest had carried her refuge’s microchip. Now about a third had been born in the wild and never known captivity. The harvest was carefully increased. Permits and bag fees supported her work. Paid staff and volunteers increased.
Kobbo College had begun a long-term project to breed men back to what they had been a thousand years before in the wild. Scientists asserted that the reduction in time to maturity had further reduced men’s already limited intelligence.
Caeso and Aelia’s son, Quintus was fourteen. He had grown up in the cabin in the forest. He had helped his mother at the refuge and hid his laughter to terrorize the screaming joeys. He restocked the feeders with his parents. He had sat in the blind in the predawn chill and watched the men feed. He had practiced his marksmanship for years, looking toward this day. An ape must be able to protect himself in the forest so far from civilization. This was his year to hunt.
Glad for his clothes and thick fur against the morning chill. He wondered how the furless men tolerated the cold. Scientists said that men had lost their fur to better tolerate the heat of the jungle. He must ask them, he chuckled and stared into the darkness. Quintus cradled his rifle and waited in the dawn’s first light. Waiting silently was hard. His mother sat beside him.
Aelia watched the feeder too and said nothing. Caeso had bought a permit for a jill. A few were offered this year for the first time though no pregnant jill and no jill seen with her joey might be taken. The man mobs must be managed. If all went well, they would answer a long simmering question. Suddenly, she tapped Quintus on the arm.
Quintus raised the rifle to his shoulder and took a deep breath. He took careful aim at his quarry. At once, he felt the powerful bond linking him to all generations of hunter apes, past and future. He squeezed the trigger.