The hunters now knew the sheep grazed unprotected in the field. They might as well have been fruit ripe on the tree ready for harvest. Xabier needed to do something. He needed to reveal the hunters. This would require some thought. He pulled a book on photon electronics from its place on the workbench. He turned to the page on metamaterials. The hunters were using a cloak. He needed to find a way to show them hiding amongst the sheep.
The middle refrain from Cantata Nº 208 played over a loudspeaker in the barn. The sheep fidgeted in the corner taking turns climbing on each other’s backs. A line of ewes stood apart from the herd staring at Xabier who sat at the workbench pondering the music as he fiddled with bits of wire. Bach intended the piece as a hunting song. Its true meaning rang in Xabier’s ear as he read. Soon he had thought of a way to uncloak the hunters.
[bctt tweet=”Bach intended his Cantata Nº 208 as a hunting song.”]On paper, he drew a map of the far corner of the field. Around the triangle perimeter he marked squares and linked each with a thin wire. He would build a tunable antenna to defeat the cloaking. If he could do it quickly, he could find their frequency and reveal their hiding places. He would have to use the flock as bait, although it would be worth it if he could defeat the hunters by showing their cloaks.
“Gizon adimentsua naiz, Xabier.” He smiled at his self-proclamation of brilliance.
He picked out the sheep for his experiment with a finger pointing at two rams, a doe-eyed ewe and her lamb, and an older ewe. He mentally pictured them in the corner of the field waiting for the hunters with their bows and arrows, and him standing with the other sheep twisting the knob on the controller revealing each hunter before they could kill. He hoped uncloaking them would make them want to hide and leave his sheep alone.
“Hau lan egin behar da,” he said out loud and under his breath. Xabier knew if the sheep had any chance his plan had to work.
In the deep purple glow of dawn, he ran the last wire connecting all of the posts. He stood looking at the corner of the field. The sheep depended on this working. He ran another length of wire away from the array up the hill and behind a rock. He then hurriedly buried the wire to hide it from view. The only thing left was the bait. He moved the five sheep into the corner of the field and let the others ran up the field. As the suns rose over the west horizon, he hid himself behind the rock and waited.
© 2018, Michael Shawn Sommermeyer. All rights reserved.
