The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [62]
In the back of a Jeep, Anjali discovered a thin, silvery NASA space blanket. She pulled it from its plastic wrap. “How pretty.”
“Yeah, baby, that’s for astronauts.”
With a practiced whip of her wrists, Anjali fluttered the thin silver garment through the air. Then she wrapped herself in it with a well-rehearsed, arm-twisting spin. Instant space-age sari. The film boys looked up and applauded cynically.
“It’s warm,” she told him, eyes glowing.
Tony nodded speechlessly. On her, it was so very hot.
Anjali shot him a come-on look that burned the marrow of his thighbones. Then she drifted off into the pines, gently trailing her silver scarf, her spotless Timberland boots flashing over the fallen trees.
With a steely effort, Tony waited until Anjali had faded from sight. Inflamed though he was, it wouldn’t do to run off with Anjali in full, blatant sight of the entire crew. Anjali was a clever and practical girl. She wouldn’t run much farther than earshot.
Tony fiddled unconvincingly with his rifle while the boys struggled to set up a nylon and aluminum tent. Stalking elk in Colorado snow was the last thing on the film crew’s minds. As soon as they could manage, they’d be settling into those heated camp chairs to get right into the German beer and the poker cards.
Tony set about to track down his girlfriend.
Unfortunately Tony Carew was a dedicated urbanite. Once in the huge, chilly forest, he quickly lost her footprints and all trace of her. A few discreet Nelson Eddy forest love-calls got no response. When Tony searched harder, he even lost the camp and the Jeeps. How had he managed to wander off without a handheld Global Positioning System? He stumbled through the pines in increasing dismay.
He heard the repeated boom of Sanjay’s rifle.
Sanjay had blown away not one, but three elk. The three huge dead animals were lying in a clearing, almost nose to tail, big heaps of bloody meat.
Tony emerged from the woods, his rifle in the crook of his arm.
“They didn’t run,” Sanjay told him.
“They didn’t run?”
“No. What’s wrong with them? They should run from me.”
Tony led Sanjay across the brown, snow-choked grass to his nearest kill. An elk was a huge beast, three times the bulk of a deer. It had a lustrous sofalike hide, and a rack of antlers the size of an easy chair.
The black skin of the animal’s muzzle had a scorched, cracked look. Its eyes were filmed and filthy. Caked slobber was streaked down its muzzle.
Tony switched his rifle from one arm to the other. “Nobody’s been looking after these animals since the old man went wrong in the head.”
Sanjay was as stupid and vain as most young actors, but he had flashes of lucidity. “These animals are sick, Tony. They are very sick.” Sanjay tipped his black hat back and raised his elegant brows. “They are blind.”
Tony nodded soberly. “Yes, they are. Do you know of a sickness called ‘elk wasting’?”
“No. So this is it?”
“It’s similar to Mad Cow Disease. From the same source, really. It starts in tainted food. Old DeFanti used to feed his elk cattle chow, to keep them sleek during the winter. I always warned him that the cattle chow might be tainted. But he was an old man, stubborn. Sometimes he wouldn’t listen to good sense.”
An ugly smile spread across Sanjay’s face. “So that is your story, eh?”
“How’s that?”
“I could make a film from this. I could make an epic. The story of Mad Cow Disease. The story of the West. It first came when the British slaughtered sick sheep, and fed the bone meal to innocent cows. A very wicked practice. For years they tried to conceal the sickness from those who ate the flesh of