I shrugged. “I said it was a prejudice. Besides, I don’t think we have much in common.”
He laughed at that. “You like women, though, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Well, that’s something.” He was silent for a moment. “Have you ever tried it?”
“Tried?”
“Hunting”
“No.” I switched the shower from water to sonic.
“You’ve lived here for years and never gone hunting?” he yelled, over the sound of the shower.
“Never.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Maybe.” I switched the shower off, and grabbed my shorts.
“Why don’t you come with us tomorrow?” he suggested. “Sondra and me. I’m going after a—what do you call the big herbivores with the crests?”
“Lambeosaurines.”
“What’s the one with the really long crest, like a snorkel?”
“Parasaurolophus.”
“Yeah, that. The satellites show a whole herd less than a hundred klicks away. Why don’t you come with us?”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
We spent most of that day seeing the floodplains through nocs and the windows of a hoverover, while I watched the satellite pictures on the com and steered us away from the herds of triceratops and torosaurus and any large predators. After a less than enchanting day, we returned to the swamp cypresses just before nightfall. Sondra wanted to get out and walk into the forest, and when I expressed reluctance, Kevin opened the door on his side and jumped out without even donning his respirator. I cursed myself silently for not having locked his door, wondered what the hell he was trying to prove, and decided that I couldn’t let him go there unarmed and alone. “Okay,” I sighed, grabbing the laser. “Put your masks on, and let’s go.”
Kevin had a good head start and he kept increasing it, though he was careful to look back occasionally to make sure Sondra was watching, or safe; maybe both. A troodon stuck its head out from behind a tree, and Kevin yelled and charged toward it. Naturally enough, it disappeared. I resigned myself to an hour of searching fruitlessly for elusive, cunning, small dinosaurs in their own, well-shadowed territory, and reached into my pocket for my shades, setting them to infra-red.
A moment later, a male troodon, a length of bamboo in its hands, appeared just a few meters in front of Kevin. He turned toward it, and stopped. We were too far behind him to hear what he was saying, but it wasn’t hard to guess; Amy was muttering something in what I guessed was Zulu, and Sondra was squealing with joy. Slowly, and cautiously, the three of us advanced toward where Kevin was now standing. We were at the edge of the wood when the troodon looked at Kevin, tilting its head first to the left, then to the right, and then raised the bamboo to its mouth. After all the fuss, it looked as though the bamboo was just food, something to chew on—and then Kevin turned to face us, and I saw something small sticking out of his throat. The bamboo wasn’t food, or a spear, but a blowgun: I brought the laser up, thumbed the safety, and yelled to the girls to head back to the car.
Kevin staggered in our direction—the dart must have been poisoned, blowgun darts almost always are. I remembered reading that BaMbuti blowguns can bring down a gorilla or elephant, and tried to forget it. Another male troodon appeared, also with a length of bamboo; I fired, and hit the blowgun, which exploded into flames, as well as the troodon holding it and the tree behind him. The damn fool had set the laser to maximum power, enough to kill a tyrannosaur, leaving enough charge for maybe five or six man-killing shots.
The fire, and the crack of the laser, scared the troodons away for a few seconds, and then a dozen appeared, brandishing weapons better than any nature had given them—triceratops horns and diyptosaurus claws. Kevin ran, but they were much faster, and they soon surrounded him, herding him away from us. I heard Sondra screaming out to Kevin, telling him to stop, stand his ground. He continued to run—and then disappeared. I stood my ground and kept firing until Amy stopped the rover a few meters behind me, and then I ran too.
With the rover at maximum lift, I drove near the spot where the troodons were gathered, warning Sondra not to look down. Kevin was lying motionless in a shallow pit, impaled on topsy horns and stakes of sharpened bamboo. The troodons looked up as our shadow passed over them, then, obviously deciding that he was already dead, began hacking at him with the horns and claws. I made a note of the location, then drove away.
“Those weapons,” said Sondra, at breakfast the next morning. “The blowguns… the troodons are hunting us, aren’t they?” I raised my eyebrows, but said nothing. I could feel Amy watching me as she ate her omelet. “Those darts wouldn’t go through dinosaur hide.”
“They might, at close range. They’d only need to sting a little, like a horsefly, to get the dinosaur running, steer him toward—in the right direction.” The stakes would work anyway, like judo—you just use your opponent’s size and weight against him—but I didn’t want to say that. She hadn’t seen Kevin die, or what little they’d brought back in a body bag.
“How big was the pit?”
“Three or four meters; big enough for a juvenile hadro or topsy, and deep enough that even an adult might have difficulty getting out.”
“I don’t know,” she said, staring into her coffee. “I still think they’re hunting us. After all, we’re the weakest prey around, aren’t we, once you separate us from the herd?”
I looked at Bruno, and then at Amy, who suddenly seemed fascinated by a butterfly on the ceiling. “It’s much more likely they’ve been using the darts on birds or pterosaurs,” I said. “Or maybe on each other. But at most, they’re taking one or two humans a year—hardly a staple of their diet, more a…”
“Target of opportunity?” Amy suggested. I glared at her, then shrugged.
Sondra sat there silently for at least a minute, then drank the rest of her tepid coffee. “Well, we have evidence, now,” she said.
Kevin’s family threatened to sue, but Sondra and Amy supported my version of events; Amy even had a few hastily-taken snapshots as proof. I kept copies after the court cleared me of all blame; they’re the only souvenirs I own. They’re a little too gruesome for public display, but Amy likes to take them out and reminisce every time she visits. “Poor Kevin,” she sighed. “If only one of us had recognized those weapons for what they were, we might have been able to save him.”
“How could we?” I asked. “The pit was well concealed, so there was no way we could have seen it from ground level. And the blowgun just looked like a length of bamboo; I’d never even seen anyone use a blowgun before. Had you?”
Amy sipped at her tea. “No, but Sondra must have. I know that Homo ergaster had them.”
“Sondra?” I stared at her. “You can’t be serious. Okay, we both disliked him, but not enough to set him up to be killed. Right?” She hesitated, then nodded. “But Sondra?”
She shrugged. “I suspect she stands to inherit a lot of money. But I could be wrong.”
Amy moved to Maia City a few months later, renting a room around the corner from the hostel, though she stays here most nights. Sondra hasn’t been back, and sometimes I miss her, but that probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway. I suspect she’s a little too civilized for the Cretaceous.
But I could be wrong.