Termination Shock

Not a bad fit overall with Dr. Rutledge, who was a reinforced concrete kind of gal, lacking in the far-fetched adornments that Rufus was used to seeing on females of the species Homo sapiens. Photographic evidence pointed to the existence of a husband and at least two children. Medium-length hair held back out of her face by a pair of laboratory safety glasses pushed up on top of her head. Middle American way of talking—either she was a transplant from out of the north, or one of those Texans who somehow grew to adulthood without picking up a Texan accent. A little prickly and short with him until he showed that he respected her. Reminded him in that way of some female army officers.

“Speaking of fun,” he finally said, “the Eurasian wild boar introductions were—”

“For sport.” She nodded. He felt he might have scored a point by his use of the word “introduction.”

“They’re more fun to hunt if they’re harder to kill,” Rufus said.

“I’m not a hunter but that sounds like a logical assumption to me.”

“Wily, fast, vicious.”

She raised her eyebrows and turned her palms up.

“A boar like that, crossed—hybridized—with a domestic variety that was bred up to be just huge—it could . . .”

He trailed off. She broke eye contact and let out a long breath she’d been gathering in as he circled closer and closer to his point.

“You’re talking about the animal that killed your daughter,” she said, in a tone that was quiet and sad but firm.

Of course. She would have googled him, just as he had her. It had been all over the papers.

She waited for him to nod before she went on.

“A hybrid of unusual size is plausible. Common sense really. But I would just caution you that the larger these animals get, the more food they have to consume to stay alive.”

Rufus was taken aback by her use of the word “caution,” which he was most accustomed to seeing on labels attached to crates of ammunition. She seemed to be warning him against falling into some kind of intellectual or ideational risk. Which would make sense, for a professor.

“So if your Hogzilla, your Moby Pig, weighs two hundred kilograms? I’ll buy that,” she continued. “Three hundred? I’m becoming skeptical. Beyond that I think you are in the realm of fantasy. Just going full Ahab. The enormous size that you are attributing to this animal is a reflection of the size of the role that it plays in your psyche. It’s just not a scientific fact. Are you about to throw up?”

“Beg pardon, ma’am?”

“You stuck your tongue out. Like you were gagging.”

“It’s a thing I do. Because of my psyche. I’m fine.”

“I want to help you,” she said. “I mean, if you want to devote your life to hunting down one hog out of several million and killing it, fine. It’s a man-eater. Getting rid of it would be a public service. But my role, if I have one, is to keep you grounded in scientific reality. So, fact number one is that it probably doesn’t weigh more than two hundred kilograms. Certainly not three hundred. Point being that if you’re confining your search to fantastically enormous animals that you heard tell of from some cholo in a T.R. Mick’s, you’re just chasing folk tales and you’ll never find him.”

That stung a little because it was true. But Rufus was used to being stung. He shook it off and nodded. It made sense. Explained a thing or two.

“Fact number two is that, by your own reckoning, this animal is already three years old. In another three years it’ll be dead of old age. She frowned at him. “You don’t believe me?”

“Huh, of course I believe you. Ma’am.” People were always saying to Rufus variations on this. It was rarely the case. This had led him to understand that his face, in its natural resting state, conveyed a sense of skeptical disbelief. He guessed it was something to do with his forehead, which had developed prominent horizontal creases. “It’s just how I look when I’m thinking.”

She turned her palms up again. “Well, this age limit is a good thing. Prevents you from going full Ahab.”

“You mentioned him before but—”

“Whaling captain who was obsessed with finding and killing one sperm whale. Problem being, sperm whales live a long time. Longer than humans. So there was never a point in Ahab’s life when he could say”—and here she whisked her hands together—“well, that’s that, time’s up, Moby-Dick must have given up the ghost by now, I can get back to—”

“Living my normal Ahab life?”

She shrugged.

“Mariel—the girl’s mother—said ‘This thing with Snout is ruining your life.’ You know what I said?”

“I sure don’t.”

“It is my life.” He stuck his tongue out.

“Well, it’s none of my business,” she said, regarding his tonsils with cool scientific detachment, “but do you have a plan for what your life might consist of three years from now when Snout is definitely no longer around?”

“It’s not gonna take three years.”