The Word for World Is Forest

by Ursula K. Le Guin

“Don,” Kees said without greeting, “the loggers have been hunting red deer in the Strips again. There are eighteen pair of antlers in the back room of the Lounge.” “Nobody ever stopped poachers from poaching, Kees.” “You can stop them. That’s why we live under martial law, that’s why the Army runs this colony. To keep the laws.” A frontal attack from Fatty Bigdome! It was almost funny. “All right,” Davidson said reasonably, “I could stop ’em. But look, it’s the men I’m looking after; that’s my job, like you said. And it’s the men that count. Not the animals. If a little extra-legal hunting helps the men get through this godforsaken life, then I intend to blink. They’ve got to have some recreation.” “They have games, sports, hobbies, films, teletapes of every major sporting event of the past century, liquor, marijuana, hallies, and a fresh batch of women at Central. For those unsatisfied by the Army’s rather unimaginative arrangements for hygienic homosexuality. They are spoiled rotten, your frontier heroes, and they don’t need to exterminate a rare native species ‘for recreation’. If you don’t act, I must record a major infraction of Ecological Protocols in my report to Captain Gosse.” “You can do that if you see fit, Kees,” said Davidson, who never lost his temper. It was sort of pathetic the way a euro like Kees got all red in the face when he lost control of his emotions.