Game Control by Lionel Shriver Read Free Book Online

larger problem is that humans and elephants cannot coexist. The Africans despise them, and if you'd ever let one of those adorable babies loose in your vegetable patch you'd see why. The only answer, as much as there is one, is stiff patrolling and a regular cull—what they do in South Africa.'
      'They would.'
      Calvin smiled. 'South Africans aren't squeamish. But here culling has become unpopular. The bunny-huggers have decided that it traumatizes the poor dears; that we create whole parks full of holocaust survivors. And you would like this, Eleanor: they're now trying to develop elephant contraceptives.'
      'Do they work?'
      He laughed. 'Do they work with people? You should know.'
      'I suppose the acceptance rate is rather low.'
      'It's technologically impractical. All that money towards deadend research just because young girls who take snaps have weak stomachs. But in East African parks, it won't come to over-population. As human numbers here go over the top, the desperation level rises as steadily as the water table goes down. You know that Kenya has imported the SAS? They use the same shoot-to-kill on poachers as they do on the IRA. Still, as long as a pair of tusks will fetch sterling pound for pound, the poachers will keep trying. And I don't blame the wretches. If I were some scarecrow villager, I'd probably shoot elephants wholesale. The dinosaurs are doomed anyway, so someone should cash in.'
      Calvin's green monkey had screamed and run away when Eleanor first walked in, but since had climbed to a balcony overhanging the living room with a basket from the kitchen. For the past five minutes, he had been pitching gooseberries from overhead, and the accuracy with which they landed on
    Eleanor suggested the target was not arbitrary. She had tried politely to pick the green berries from her hair, but the squashed ones were staining her dress. 'Um,' she finally objected. 'Calvin?'
      'Malthus!' Calvin picked up the handful of gooseberries she had neatly piled on the table and threw them back at the monkey, who scurried down the stairs, to assume a glare through the grille from the patio more unsettling than pitched fruit. 'Sorry. Malthus doesn't like guests. Don't take it personally. Malthus, I suspect, doesn't even like me.'
      'This culling work—' She collected herself, still finding pulp in her cuff. 'Is that what got you into demography?'
      'Quite. Ah, but graduate school was deadly dry after Murchison Falls…Perhaps demographics was a mistake. Since then my life has been conducted on paper. It's not my nature. I like aeroplanes, projects, a little bang-bang.'
      'Was the work dangerous?'
      'Not at all. Shooting those massive grey bull's-eyes in open grassland was easy as picking off cardboard boxes. And they're supposed to be so intelligent, but they're hopelessly trusting. That isn't intelligent.'
      'You don't talk about elephants with much affection.'
      'They make me angry.'
      'Why?'
      'I don't know.'
      'So in your view the elephants have had it?'
      It was a little queer. While she had noticed the cold in Calvin's eyes, they had at least remained dark and clear; but as she watched, a film cast over them. Calvin sat down abruptly as if someone had pushed him. 'It doesn't matter.'
      Eleanor cocked her head. 'That's odd. I was getting the impression only a moment ago that wildlife meant a great deal to you.'
      'A moment ago it did.' Calvin's body gave a short jerk, as if starting at the wheel. 'Curry,' he said.
      Trying to be conversational, Eleanor asked while nibbling her chicken, 'What do you think of the AIDS situation in Kenya? Do you expect it will take off?'
      'I think far too much is being made of that virus,' he said irritably. 'What's one more deadly disease?'
      He didn't seem to want to discuss it, so she let the subject drop.

    3

    In the Land of Shit-Fish

    For all her training in contraceptive counselling, Eleanor's work in family