Night of the Hyena

By Mac MacCarter

An American family survives back to back world pandemics, travels to distant lands and works to form a sane society. However, wherever they go, there skulks the most devastating enemy of all.
... The educator stated, "Some have elected to stay and we wish them the best, but we think that a great fishing industry could be carved out at Dar es Salaam. We think we can develop a better market on the continent." ...
Several of the Minsk people seemed startled when Da'ud asked, "How do you hope to get there, seeing that your ship does not run and you have no skilled mechanics?" ...
... About that time the educator had noticed armed female hyena hunters drifting into sight, eager for action, but he replied smoothly, "Of course that is our wish; I cannot see what has disturbed my colleague so much. If only we could pay you, but..."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mac MacCarter
• Release date: May 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476177403

Mac MacCarter

Mac is an anachronism, a scientist that has worked and studied in many different fields. Few modern scientists outside movies and comic books actually do so, and it is rarely a rout to riches. However, he finds that his career has been a joy. He has taught and was the first Dean of Research and Extension in a, then tiny, Micronesian Community college. He was an ecologist for the Philippine National Oil Company where he and his colleagues attempted to protect rainforests from illegal loggers, pursued innovative reforestation methods on geothermal steam drilling reservations and assured some of the cleanest rivers in the country. Contrary to stereotypes of ecological standards burdening enterprise, both the PNOC and small farmers profited, even in the relatively short run. He was principal investigator for biological control of weeds in New Zealand where he mentored a large number of unemployed youngsters, all of which have succeeded, some spectacularly. Also in NZ he was co-project leader of a coastal marine monitoring project and developed statistical methods for monitoring high energy beaches. He has represented a Native American tribe on anadromous fish issues, and informally provided support for family business commercial fishing (as contrasted with nets extreme long lines and huge fishing ships). He has taught botany general biology, microbiology, mathematics, vocational agriculture, and statistics. His completed degrees include a masters in MAg in Agronomy(crop ecology), a MPH in Industrial Hygiene, and a PhD in Entomology. He and his son briefly manufactured technical and custom gaming computers. He has published various scientific papers. He currently has two science fictions (in the true sense of SF, no magic and no ESP) and a book on research techniques on the way. His futuristic book Night of the Hyena is already uploaded on Smashwords.

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Night of the Hyena

Mac MacCarter

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Mac MacCarter

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords,com and purchase your own copy Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chapter I

Nothing but grass in all directions. For hundreds of kilometers...well, almost nothing but grass. Jack shuddered as he reflected that from time immemorial, the hyena, with its mighty jaws, slunk out there. Somewhere in the darkness it peered through the grass, patiently waiting for someone to carelessly nod off.

Jack stumbled on; he must keep moving to keep awake, but eventually he would have to stop to rest his weary legs. He was hardly aware of the heat and the buzzing insects as he tried to put one foot before the other.

He had made a monkey of himself by coming alone, but he was not the first primate to suffer. Baboons and chimpanzees had once sheltered in trees here to sleep at night, safe from hyenas and other predators. Now these other primates were almost gone due to the rarity of sleeping trees. How he wished for a safe tree to climb, or better yet, an abandoned settler's shack in which to take refuge. But, a sea of highly flammable grass allows no transgression by tree or by undefended wooden structure. Wakefulness was the only defense against being eaten, he thought drowsily, as his footsteps slowed...

Too late for this one. Ann held the jar with its blowfly culture, and frowned at it. It's surprising how suddenly it happens.

Jack inwardly cringed; after graduate school and several postdocs he had become acutely aware that he was not as well suited to research as he had been to the classroom. His professors, and even more gratifying to him, his peers, had delighted in his creativeness and in his comprehension of technical details. However, a professor's or scientist's true delight must be in a funded area of research if he is to continue teaching, or doing much else of value, at a university.

The tedium of repeating every operation hundreds of times per experiment to rule out chance effects had numbed his once nimble mind.

In the previous generation, at least corporate operations had AI robots to assist with research, but now the universities did it all with the cheapest of dumb-bots which were really no good for any process still under development. How can anyone repeat the same sequence of five different micro dilutions 400 times, meet schedules and keep things straight in the spreadsheets? he asked aloud.

Just think, replied Ann, to get the privilege to try to do so requires more than a decade of absolute dedication. In the scientific disciplines, graduate school is a training ground for type-A behavior. I am going to give up this self abuse when I get my masters and find something more enjoyable to do.

This was a common graduate student's threat, but Jack knew she was not kidding. Perhaps it was because they had enough sense to stop when they had had enough that female graduate students were considered 'a bad investment' by some professors, not all of them male.

He suspected Ann had gone into science to prove she could do it. Well, she had taken the hardest courses and excelled and now she seemed to have the good sense to go on to something else.

She went on, raising her voice to be heard above the gurgling and slurping of the archaic water still, Haven't you noticed that scientific success becomes a religion that tolerates no other god? All who enter its temple must go up to 'success' or go down to...well, the thought of where is too horrible to consider, Dr. Jack, sir.

Well, oh humble graduate student, I have already spent considerably more than a decade at the altar of that god, not to mention six years in the Public Health Corps, sampling sewers to prepay the last two years of college, and that god has not yet smiled on me. It wouldn't be much easier even if we had some AI-bots to help, they aren't exactly like in the old Asimov sci-fi books. Ninety five percent of the work of any funded project consists of focusing one's attention on tedium for longer hours than is demanded in mere sweatshops run by mere human tyrants.

Right! she exclaimed. And already one of your old instructors has committed suicide. A nice guy too."

He tried not to think of the professor's weird ritual-like self destruction in the acoustic testing chamber down the hall. Another four of his most interesting bench mates had given themselves to the slow suicide of alcohol and drugs.

He waited for her to finish using her loud blender before replying, Our friends may think scientific 'failure' is an unbearable disgrace, but I think that disgrace had best be accepted soon. Jobs are next to impossible to get anyway.

You are not a failure, Jack. I hate it when you say things like that. Think what you have done for the students here. Who would have looked after them if you hadn't come along? Not those gross grantsmen like the department head. We both need to get out of this place and find somewhere else where we can be useful.

"Well, even without any so called failure, a PhD on my resume makes me what non-academic employers call 'over qualified,' meaning underemployed. PhDs are stereotyped as likely to be unhappy, transient troublemakers. Many PhDs, except possibly in medicine and engineering, spend a good deal of their 'careers' as anonymous laborers.

"Aside from the effects of 'illegals' (really disenfranchised wage slaves) on the availability of labor jobs, laborers are abused off the job as well as on it. Regardless of all their egalitarian talk, the middle class treats laborers as perverts and criminals. They stereotype them as alcoholics, druggies, and thieves. They take it as additional evidence that you are a substance abuser if they know you have higher qualifications and cannot find permanent white collar or highly skilled blue collar work.

"Although a few remaining pharmaceutical companies need workers, they tend to outsource those jobs. I have heard that they move their operations to different countries on twenty or thirty year cycles so that workers won't get uppity.

Being a college professor might be no great treat anyway. There are few places on earth, other than in religious organizations, where the politics are quite as petty and vicious as in a university department.

Jack, this situation depresses me terribly, and I don't just mean the dilutions either. I have these upsetting dreams where you kill yourself. I think it would be great if you were a Christian so we could get married like you want, but even then I could not give you happiness; you are responsible for that. I could not follow you around being happy for you.

Don't worry, he replied, neither the sacrifice of a dozen years and half my hair to the university illusion, nor the dreadful feeling that I am not fit to serve at the altar of science will drive me to do that. I didn't hang on through a hellish middle class childhood and dozens of dreadful required classes just for that. I really am beginning to conjure up a lot of possible new goals and options.

In recent years he had been amazed to find that women liked him as much as he liked them. Jack was aware of the joy of discovering that he, the family goat, was eligible to join the human race. Ann rated as someone special, one of those people who is truly alive. Too bad she seemed to be hung up on that religion stuff.

Darn, another error! Since he could not keep his mind on the endless dilutions, Jack drifted over to where Ann had set down the fly jar.

I've been reading that book you gave me, the one by C.S. Lewis called Surprised by Joy, and I find him very easy to identify with. Perhaps that is even a little vain. To discover that such a wonderful scholar can see something in Christianity is a bit surprising.

I thought you would enjoy it. He wrote a science fiction trilogy too. I'll bring it tomorrow.

It's only 4:00 a.m. Why not let ol' Dr. Jack take you somewhere romantic like the truck stop and we can discuss all this. We can then come back and work until the lab gets too crowded at around 8:30 or 9:00 a.m.

OK, if you will leave your maggots out of it while we have 'lunch.' Hold on a minute until I get this dialysis running.

Peering through the muck smeared walls of the jar, he saw that (through his own carelessness) what had been a vigorous seething larval culture two days ago had suddenly collapsed, dead in its own waste products.

You know, Ann, once things start to go wrong in these cultures, all sorts of disease processes start to take place. The majority of these larvae would have died anyway even if I had noticed this earlier...

He awoke with a start, staring frantically around him in the dim early light. Five forms squatted on their haunches in the grass close before him, regarding him predatorily, or was it merely curiously?

Ann was certainly having an interesting time at the beach. For instance, there was the jackal that had appeared a day or so after they had landed, or crunched, or whatever one wished to call it. It was a harmless animal, little more than a cowering unapproachable dog, that tailed the adults or twelve year old Zack everywhere. It appeared to hope for a fish head or other scraps.

Another item of this canine's menu was a problem. When anyone went to defecate, it or its mate would dodge in and snatch the stuff in mid air. They were so quick that whacking at them with a stick did not always stop them, and it drove Zack to distraction.

Funny, she mused, the movies about adventurers never even implied that spies, diplomats and explorers spent most of their time having dysentery or coping with such things as the table manners of jackals.

Ann had traveled to many places with Jack, and before that with her embassy staff family. She had never before been stranded in Africa, or Neoafrica as it had come to be called. However, she knew from long experience as an international consultant's wife that at least 70 percent of every true adventure is spent on such logistics as trying to find a toilet or waiting in crowded poorly ventilated airports. The waiting in airports usually occurred when one was on the verge of dysentery and there would be only one overflowing toilet that never had a door. For some reason, the one in the Manila domestic terminal had tended to have a cluster of people standing around it, merrily chatting as if they were attending a hurricane party.

She wondered if there was any functional plumbing anywhere now. A few months ago, the Collapse, with its two plagues in succession, had left too few survivors to maintain civilization as her generation had known it. Ever getting to see another movie was unlikely. It may be a long time before there were even magazines again.

The tide had not quite gone out far enough to collect sea urchins and mussels yet. This morning she had found three fine fish on her set lines, but it was not often so.

Fishing had barely supported Zack and herself, since Jack had gone out to collect a founders' group, as he called it. She thought it a basically good idea to collect a community, especially because they expected that people were no longer living at their destination, Madagascar. However, she doubted he would, indeed she almost hoped he wouldn't, really be able to collect the four thousand that the populations course had taught were necessary for a genetically stable long term human community. Lost in the crowd wasn't really the correct description for what she feared, but being overwhelmed by it was. At least he probably wouldn't show up wearing flowing white robes with a great multitude following him, though his semi-manic enthusiasm when he left had her imagining it that way.

She tried not to admit that joining a potential unwashed horde was the least of her worries. They had glimpsed the occasional hyena slinking at the edge of the tall grass on the tops of the surrounding ocean bluffs. She tried not to think of the stories told by former expats about locals being seized by those skull crushing jaws when they carelessly slept in the open. For all she knew, there might be other dangers such as lions, cape buffalo, or bandits or thugs out there too. Jack, however, had been certain he could find some sort of settlement where he could rest, and start recruiting, within a day's walk. As for keeping hyenas at bay, he could always make a fire, after cutting down enough grass to keep it from getting out of control. She shuddered at the thought of sleeping out there without being able to set a watch, fire or no. At least Jack was usually a very light sleeper, but now, although she realized he was doing what they had agreed was worth the risk, his absence was causing her to miss sleep. She wished she had persuaded him not to go out there, but she had strong feelings about letting others run their own lives and not interfering.

Most of the grass was too sharp edged to just walk through, so they had fashioned heavy canvas chaps for his journey, and he had taken a machete. She wondered if maybe he should have taken the sextant to help him navigate in such a featureless landscape. However, he had pointed out that he could always find the seacoast by checking the direction of the sun. After that he would only need to check north and south along the coast in order to spot Ann's beacon.

She was maintaining a bright fire at night, and Zack was eagerly tending a smoky fire by day. Jack should be able to see it well inland when the smoke chose to go up instead of, as often happened, drifting along the ground.

Jack had not been gone long when it occurred to her that if the interior was a vast grassy fire hazard as she suspected, the sea coast might be a highway and a food source for whoever may have survived. She and Zack might be able to collect a reasonably large band while waiting right here. She felt a little buoyed by the prospect of maybe outdoing Jack while waiting.

Not for the first time, Zack was fretting that Dad might not bring back any boys his age. Too bad they couldn't bring Cho and his family. The military had scooped up Zack's family so suddenly he hadn't even had a chance to say good-bye to his friend. Mom and Dad were OK, but even little kids to play with would be a nice change.

Dad seemed to think everything would be OK, they would build a big boat or a little fleet from drift wood and the wreck of their boat. Then, after they had enough people so that the children could get married some day, they would sail out to colonize Madagascar. Why would anyone want go around with silly tattling girls and to get married anyway?

Zack also had some serious worries. One concerned that thunderstorm the first morning after Dad had left, and a couple of squalls since. He hadn't mentioned it to Mom; no need for her to worry, but any kid would have been more careful than Dad; at least, he, Zack, would have been. Dad had put some old book matches from the yacht in his pocket and had hurried off without even a raincoat. Now if Zack was to go out there he would make one of those bow things with sticks and a bit of cord to start a fire, but Dad was probably too impractical for that.

Zack looked up at the top of the bluff with its fringe of trees on the edge of the sea of grass. Uneasily he wondered if Dad really would be able to start a protective campfire out