The way was difficult across this tilted country, the land ripped and corrugated by a million small deformations. No trails had been constructed here, and there was no good way through; it was up and down and over and back and up and down again; and nothing much to hunt; and no disk houses nearby; and not much food to be found. And one of the youngsters slipped while they were crossing a line of coral cactus, seaming the land like a living barbed-wire fence, and he fell on one knee into a nest of spines. The magnesium poles served then as a stretcher frame, and on they went north carrying the crying boy, the best hunters out on the flanks of the group with bows and arrows, to see if they could shoot anything flushed by their passage. Nirgal saw several misses, then one long flight of an arrow that hit a running jackrabbit, which tumbled and flopped until they killed it— a tremendous shot, it had them all leaping around shrieking. They burned more calories celebrating the shot than they ever got back from eating the tiny shreds of rabbit meat that were each person’s share, and the butcher woman was contemptuous. “Ritual cannibalism of our rodent brother,” she scoffed as she ate her shred. “Don’t ever tell me there’s no such thing as luck.” But the hothead spear thrower just laughed at her, and the others seemed cheered by their mouthful of meat.

Then later that same day they came on a young caribou bull, off on his own, looking disoriented. Their food problems were solved, if they could catch him. But he was wary despite his confused air, and he kept beyond the reach of even the longest bow shot, heading away from the group, down the Great Escarpment with all the hunters in view on the slope above.

Eventually everyone got on their hands and knees, and began to crawl laboriously over the hot rock of midday, trying to traverse quick enough to circle the caribou. But the wind blew from behind them, and the caribou moved skittishly downslope or traversed north, grazing as he went, and looking back at his pursuers more and more curiously, as if wondering why they continued with such a charade. Nirgal too began to wonder. And apparently he was not alone; the caribou’s skepticism had infected them. A variety of subtle and not-so-subtle whistles filled the air, in what was evidently an argument over strategy. Nirgal understood then that hunting was hard, that the group failed often. That they were perhaps not very good at it. Everyone was baking on the rock, and they had not eaten properly for a couple of days. Part of life for these people; but today too miserable to be fun.