During this explanation Hull had been pacing the room with quick, catlike steps. He stopped now and said, “Thank you, Mr. Jensen. So there is no questioning my right to suicide. Nor is there any illegality in my selecting one or more persons such as yourselves to perform the act for me. And your own actions are considered legal under the Permitted Murder section of the Suicide Act. All well and good. The only legal question arises in a recent appendage to the Suicide Act.”
He nodded to Mr. Jensen.
“The appendage states,” Jensen said, “that a man can select any death for himself, at any time and place, by any means, etcetera, so long as that death is not physically injurious to others.”
“That,” said Hull, “is the troublesome clause. Now, a hunt is a legal form of suicide. A time and place is arranged. You, the hunters, chase me. I, the Quarry, flee. You catch me, kill me. Fine! Except for one thing.”
He turned to the lawyer. “Mr. Jensen, you may leave the room. I do not wish to implicate you.”
After the lawyer had left, Hull said, “The one problem remaining is, of course, the fact that I will be armed and trying my very best to kill you. Any of you. All of you. And that is illegal.”
Hull sank gracefully into a chair. “The crime, however, is mine, not yours. I have employed you to kill me. You have no idea that I plan to protect myself, to retaliate. That is a legal fiction, but one which will save you from becoming possible accessories to the fact. If I am caught trying to kill one of you, the penalty will be severe. But I will not be caught. One of you will kill me, thus putting me beyond the reach of human justice. If I should be so unfortunate as to kill all of you, I shall complete my suicide in the old-fashioned manner, with poison. But that would be a disappointment to me. I trust you will not be so clumsy as to let that happen. Any questions?”
The hunters were murmuring among, themselves:
“Slick fancy-talking bastard.”
“Forget it, all Quarries talk like that.”
“Thinks he's better than us, him and his classy legal talk.”
“We'll see how good he talks with a bit of steel through him.”
Hull smiled coldly. “Excellent. I believe the situation is clear. Now, if you please, tell me what your weapons are.”
One by one the hunters answered:
“Mace.”
“Net and Trident.”
“Spear.”
“Morning star.”
“Bola.”
“Scimitar.”
“Bayonetted rifle,” Blaine said when his turn came.
“Broadsword.”
“Battle-axe.”
“Saber.”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” Hull said. “I will be armed with a rapier, naturally, and no armor. Our meeting will take place Sunday, at dawn, on my estate. The butler will give each of you a paper containing full instructions on how to get there. Let the bayonet man remain. Good morning to the rest of you.”
The hunters left. Hull said, “Bayonetry is an unusual art. Where did you learn it?”
Blaine hesitated, then said, “In the army, 1943 to 1945.”
“You’re from the past?”
Blaine nodded.
“Interesting,” Hull said, with no particular sign of interest. “Then this, I daresay, is your first hunt?”
“It is.”
“You appear a person of some intelligence. I suppose you have your reasons for choosing so hazardous and disreputable an employment?”
“I'm low on funds,” Blaine said, “and I can't find anything else to do.”
“Of course,” Hull said, as though he had known it all along. “So you turned to hunting. Yet hunting is not a thing merely to turn to; and hunting the beast Man is not for everyone. The trade calls for certain special abilities, not the least of which is the ability to kill. Do you think you have the innate talent?”
“I believe so,” Blaine said, though he hadn't considered the question until now.
“I wonder,” Hull mused. “In spite of your bellicose appearance, you don't seem the type. What if you find yourself incapable of killing me? What if you hesitate at the crucial moment when steel grates on steel?”
“I'll chance it,” Blaine said.
Hull nodded agreeably. “And so will I. Perhaps, hidden deep within you, a spark of murder burns. Perhaps not. This doubt will add spice to the game — though you may not have time to savour it.”
“That's my worry,” Blaine said, feeling an intense dislike for his elegant and rhetorical employer. “Might I ask you a question?”
“Consider me at your service.”
“Thank you. Why do you wish to die?”
Hull stared at him, then burst into laughter. “Now I know you’re from the past! What a question!”
“Can you answer it?”
“Of course,” Hull said. He leaned back in his chair, and his eyes took on the dreamy look of a man forming rhetoric.
“I am forty-three years old, and weary of nights and days. I am wealthy man, and an uninhibited one. I have experimented, contrived, laughed, wept, loved, hated, tasted and drunk — my fill. I have sampled all Earth has to offer me, and I choose not to tediously repeat the experience. When I was young, I pictured this excellent green planet revolving mysteriously around its flamboyant yellow luminary as a treasure-trove, a brass box of delights inexhaustible in content and immeasurable in their effect upon my ever-eager desires. But now, sadly, I have lived longer and have witnessed sensation's end. And now I see with what bourgeois complacency our fat round Earth circles, at wary distance and unvarying pace, its gaudy dreaded star. And the imagined treasure chest of the Earth seems now a child's painted toy box, shallow in its contents and mediocre in its effect upon nerves too quickly deadened to all delight.”
Hull glanced at Blaine to note the effect of his words, and then went on.
“Boredom stretches before me now like a vast, arid plain — and I choose not to be bored. I choose, instead, to move on, move forward, move out; to sample Earth's last and greatest adventure — the adventure of Death, gateway to the afterlife. Can you understand that?”
“Of course,” Blaine said, irritated yet impressed by Hull's theatrics. “But what's the rush? Life might have some good things still in store for you. And death is inevitable. Why rush it?”
“Spoken like a true 20th Century optimist,” Hull said, laughing. “ ‘Life is real, life is earnest…’ In your day, one had to believe that life was real and earnest. What alternative was there? How many of you really believed in a life after death?”
“That doesn't alter the validity of my point,” Blaine said, hating the stodgy, cautious, reasonable position he was forced to assume.
“But it does! The perspective on life and death has changed now. Instead of Longfellow's prosy advice, we follow Nietzsche's dictum — to die at the right time! Intelligent people don't clutch at the last shreds of life like drowning men clinging to a bit of board. They know that the body's life is only an infinitesimal portion of man's total existence. Why shouldn't they speed the body's passing by a few years if they so desire? Why shouldn't those bright pupils skip a grade or two of school? Only the frightened, the stupid, the uneducated grasp at every possible monotonous second on Earth.”
“The frightened, stupid and uneducated,” Blaine repeated. “And the unfortunates who can't afford Hereafter insurance.”
“Wealth and class have their privileges,” Hull said, smiling faintly, “and their obligations as well. One of those obligations is the necessity of dying at the right time, before one becomes a bore to one's peers and a horror to oneself. But the deed of dying transcends class and breeding. It is every man's patent of nobility, his summons from the king, his knightly adventure, the greatest deed of his life. And how he acquits himself in that lonely and perilous enterprise is his true measure as a man.”
Hull's blue eyes were fierce and glittering. He said, “I do not wish to experience this crucial event in bed. I do not wish a dull, tame, commonplace death to sneak over me disguised as sleep. I choose to die — fighting!”